10 ms·

Every single major population center that has distorted (high) housing costs relative to income, also has very strong protections for the existing home owners (

Every single major population center that has distorted (high) housing costs relative to income, also has very strong protections for the existing home owners (NIMBY). "There are no coincidences..." The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. This will probably never happen in the U.S., because the government no longer functions as intended.

foofie 3y ago
> The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. I think that most jurisdictions already have the legal tools they need to put the public good in front of special interest groups, in the form of eminent domain laws. It's just that the policial will is just not there.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights. Really this is a case where states should pre-empt localities.
  - foofie 3y ago
    > Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights. I don't understand what point you tried to make. Fair market value is what you expect to pay anyway, and the point of eminent domain is not to fleece property owners. Legal disputes are also not a problem, and quite expectable. It's part of the checks and balances of not having corrupt government officials just steal property to hand it over to the highest bidder. The key factor is political will. Government officials need to fight to get this sort of project through, and be able to invest their time and effort to navigate political chicanery.
- carbocation 3y ago
  My impression is that you don't need eminent domain takings for this, you just need higher level government (e.g., states) to set more rules around how restrictive local residential zoning is allowed to be.
mrkstu 3y ago
Well, depends on the level of government you're talking about. If it is local, then if local homeowners (who are local voters) don't want the development, it is eminently 'democratic.'
- afavour 3y ago
  I think it's an interesting question. If I stop my neighbor from building an extension that's 1v1. Doesn't map easily to "democracy". Now, if I and the neighbor on the other side stop our middle neighbor building an extension... it's sort of democracy? The majority decides. But what if everyone else on our street wants to allow it? Now blocking is undemocratic. Thoughout all of this my neighbor might insist they don't care what anyone thinks and they should be able to do whatever they want with their own land. The citizens of a particular city neighborhood blocking development is democratic when looked at up close and undemocratic when looked at from afar. There aren't any easy answers and anyone pretending there are is fooling themselves.
  - cortesoft 3y ago
    Democracy is not an easily defined concept in practice. In theory, Democracy is simply the idea that the government is formed from the will of the people... but there is no single will of the people. How do you decide, then, what the will of the people is? Many of us have grown up with the idea that 'majority rules' is democracy, but why? What makes 51% a magic number? Most modern democracies don't like the idea of a majority suppressing a minority, so we put restrictions on what the majority can do. Is that undemocratic? Is the Bill of Rights undemocratic because it blocks the will of the people? There are no easy answers to these questions.
  - delichon 3y ago
    Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner is democracy, illustrating a common failure mode of the worst form of government except for all of the others.
  - mebassett 3y ago
    I usually use "democracy" to describe a situation where there are regular transfers of power through reason, persuasion, and cooperation and not through violence or the threat of violence. I'm not sure that it applies to this case about your neighbor, unless you are stopping them through a threat of violence, in which case it is certainly undemocratic.
tnel77 3y ago
A major issue with housing is that it is a primary driver of wealth for many Americans. Obviously, this comes at the expense of our fellow Americans who do not own a home. I was able to buy shortly out of college (1% down loan) so rising home prices don’t impact me as much since my home has also gone up in value. I was able to sell the first house and roll that equity into the next house. As long as it’s the main store of wealth for your average citizen, there will be very little incentive to change that.
- smallmancontrov 3y ago
  [flagged]
- tptacek 3y ago
  Upzoning is a win-win for existing homeowners. Land doesn't get expropriated to build multifamily; it's purchased. Multifamily is a more efficient use of a lot than SFH, so it's purchased at a premium. NIMBYs worry that the mere existence of nearby multifamily will decrease their home value. In rare and unsympathetic cases (places like Winnetka in Illinois) that may be true. But in the bedroom neighborhoods of big cities and their inner ring suburbs, it's not; allowing missing-middle multifamily will revitalize neighborhoods and help shift the cost burden from SFH property taxes to sales tax (retail follows rooftops).
  - PheonixPharts 3y ago
    > NIMBYs worry that the mere existence of nearby multifamily will decrease their home value. In rare and unsympathetic cases ... that may be true. It's not rare. I've known multiple people, myself included, who have decided not to make an offer on a single family home because it neighbors a gross apartment building. The vast majority of home buyers want single family homes. I don't know where HN obsession with vertical housing comes from, maybe because the majority are young and still live in apartments, but this isn't reflective of most home buyers The only adults I know who will even consider purchasing a condo are single with no pets and no intention of having a family. Even among most childless couples, once they live in a single family home they would never go back.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Spivak 3y ago
> the government no longer functions as intended. On the other hand it seems like it's functioning exactly as intended. The interests of the people who live in <area> and who elect the city council are being represented just as they should be. The argument could equally be if you don't like it, build somewhere else. Do you believe communities have any right to self-determination? I would feel a bit peeved if I and all my neighbors built this nice neighborhood and then am told too bad people really like your neighborhood so we're letting Alliance Residential buy up a bunch of property for a huge apartment complex. The neighborhood I grew up in is going through this. They were a bunch of lower-middle class people who bought houses in a "rough" area because it's what they could afford, made it nice and then developers saw dollar signs. They don't have the kind of pull to keep them out so it's about to get steamrolled with gentrification.
- pixl97 3y ago
  This gets problematic as what is the right of others over your private property. What is the right of an individual property owners self determination versus the communities?
  - Spivak 3y ago
    If you've got an answer for how to strike that balance you'd best start writing essays for the Federalist Papers 2nd Edition. Because obviously you can do whatever you want with your property: well not open a business because it's not zoned for that, and not build too close to the property line, but anything else! Oh and you can't make too much noise after 9pm that's just rude, or fix your own electrical work because if you do a shoddy job it'll catch your neighbor's house on fire, and...
    - foobarian 3y ago
      Well, clearly it was someone else's property first, and what *they* decided they want to do with *their* property is to parcel it out and sell to newcomers, but with some strings attached such as: no opening businesses, no building too close to the subdivided property line, no noise after 9pm, no fixing own electrical, ... :-)
dixie_land 3y ago
If they don't like it, they can move. It is funny how people criticize the US "colonialism" yet feel entitled that they should be able to move into any neighborhood and drive out current inhabitants.
- cortesoft 3y ago
  Do you think we should not allow specific groups of people to live in certain areas?
  - dixie_land 3y ago
    No one is allowing or disallowing specific groups of people, the market decides. Is Ferrari "not allow specific groups of people" (I am in that group) to buy their cars by not pricing them the same as a Honda?
    - ryukafalz 3y ago
      The market is not deciding when municipalities are legally prohibiting denser, lower-cost housing from being built. To use your example, it's as if we were to restrict car production to mostly only Ferraris. And then if someone can't afford a Ferrari, we tell them to buy a Honda - but there aren't many of them to buy.
      - iteria 3y ago
        But there are reasons for municipalities to do that. Namely infrastructure. The city next to mine allowed uncontrolled building of housing and that city is a shitshow right now. The roads are clogged and often gridlocked. They deal with all kinds of failure modes in their utilities due to high usage. No. My town is being more strategic about it. They allowed businesses to come in first and expanded out the robustness of the local coop's electric grid and only then did they allow appartments and they are doing them in stages to make sure the area can handle it. This is important in an area where not everyone is even hooked up to the city's water supply or has access to city sewage.
happyopossum 3y ago
> because the government no longer functions as intended This seems contrary to what you're stating - local government exists to represent the interests of local residents. Protecting those residents from external forces is completely in-line with their mandate. > If they don't like it, they can move. A person who owns land somewhere should have more sway over local politics than a megacorp developer from another state or country. How about that developer moves their project somewhere else if they don't like it?
- tptacek 3y ago
  There are limits to the acceptable protections Home Rule local governments can supply, and a growing consensus that single-family zoning is not one of those acceptable protections, which is leading states to preempt local governments on that question.
  - dh2022 3y ago
    Well, the growing consensus is not big enough to sway the local governments. I guess you need to wait for it to grow until is big enough....
    - tptacek 3y ago
      The point of the comment you're responding to is that we're approaching a policy equilibrium where local governments don't matter anymore on this question, because they're not allowed to rule on it. See: California.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  > A person who owns land somewhere should have more sway over local politics than a megacorp developer from another state or country. The developer's interests come from the local non-land owning residents...
xyzelement 3y ago
You seem to be coming from the perspective that people who don't live in a place should have more say over the nature of that place than those who do live there. To put it in your terms, why does it make more sense to tell existing residents "your place has to change and you can move if you don't like it" vs channel the new residents to other places where more housing is available and is available cheaper.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  They absolutely did not say that non-residents should have "more say over the nature of that place." Simply and narrowly that residents should not be able to block housing development, a much different and more straightforward position.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    If the residents don't have the most say, who is the authority that is enforcing housing development? How would that not be non-residents?
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      Residents do have the most influence and the most concentrated control. That's not quite the same as being the only authority, or having absolute influence however, and this is a correct allocation of power. Residents don't and shouldn't expect to have the final say on who can live in their area. This is explicitly acknowledged by, for example, racial housing covenants being illegal these days.
- aclatuts 3y ago
  The NIMBYs don't only block new residents moving in. They also block existing residents from building new housing that reflects changing tastes and trends.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 3y ago
geodel 3y ago
LOL. So people who have been living in an area should have no say but people from planning to move must have a say. > This will probably never happen in the U.S Thank god for that. Maybe checkout in other countries like Canada, UK, France, Germany or even eastern europe, further in Asia on how they are doing on housing front. For sure they couldn't be having housing policies as bad as US.
- sydbarrett74 3y ago
  Canada and the UK have woeful housing shortages. They're not doing much, if any, better than the US is.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    I'd guess that is the point of the comment. In the US we can blame zoning, NIMBYs, and car-centric society for housing problems. But what about those other countries? What's the reason there? I suspect important drivers of home pricing are: - Young people not getting married and starting a family right out of school, making average household size drop considerably - Increased standards for construction and rental quality - Everyone wants more space, houses are pushing twice the size they were 30+ years ago I think these are more plausible than just zoning and cars. I'd guess those are only serious problems in a handful of very dense cities which are constrained geographically. The household size issue will probably level out, you can't really go below 1. Lowering standards won't happen. But smaller homes might. Bring back starter homes.
    - lanfeust6 3y ago
      > What's the reason there? The same. Canada's population grew by 3% last year but housing supply remains inelastic. Small developers have difficulty getting loans, zoning, NIMBYs sue projects, etc. > I think these are more plausible than just zoning and cars. It may be more complex than "just" zoning, but it's certainly more-so zoning than the conceit that people want larger houses. People want houses period.
    - sydbarrett74 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
notahacker 3y ago
Strong homeowner protection is almost universal throughout the developed world, including regions where the cost of housing is low relative to wage levels, so whilst it may be true to say that expensive parts of the US and Europe are homeowner friendly and have restrictive planning laws it doesn't indicate any actual correlation. New York isn't super expensive because other places take advantage of greater ability to build to a higher density. In most lower middle income countries with relatively limited property rights, urban housing that can actually be bought is actually much more expensive relative to local median incomes, though these do have more options in the form of dorms and slums...
- bombcar 3y ago
  Homeownership protection is strong because it's one of the things that people will most strongly fight for - it's "the castle". And almost no matter where you live, there's someplace (even nearby!) that's better (and usually more expensive).
oramit 3y ago
The incredible thicket of state, county, and municipal rules all layer and combine to make housing incredibly difficult to build. It's the technical debt of the material world. Seriously, look up your local zoning rules. It's not "you can't build a chemical plant next to a preschool" like it's so often portrayed. It's minimum size for the lot, max square footage of the house based on lot size, max/min frontage, height allowances, max garage sizes, minimum number of trees, number of windows.... etc. It really just goes on like that, and then to top it off, you can be totally compliant with code and still not be approved. Either because of local incompetence (building permits stuck "in review" for years) or because of local opposition.
- __egb__ 3y ago
  Many of the zoning rules you list, and far many more that you don’t, exist for valid reasons. Those reasons may not be as obvious as the chemical plant/preschool rule, but that doesn’t mean they’re not just as valid. I live near a cove that comes off of the Chesapeake Bay. We have many of those zoning rules here for environmental reasons. Water movement and erosion are huge concerns here. Rules that affect density, frontages, trees within 100’ of the water…they are all necessary for the common good of the entire area. We actually have a case on the other side of the neighborhood. A guy bought some land near his property for cheap. It’s not zoned for development because much of it is wetlands. He thought he could pressure the local zoning board to rezone it so he could make a handsome profit reselling it to a developer. As part of that effort, he diverted a creek and filled in the wetlands…and now several houses in the adjoining neighborhood flood (and there are legal repercussions for our entire neighborhood).
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    This is exactly the kind of Motte-and-Bailey argument the commenter you are replying to is talking about. Sure, you can justify some of the regulations, much like you can justify not allowing a chemical plant next to a school, but there are, in many places, hundreds to thousands of such rules and the vast majority of them are _not_ that important. How does not wanting houses to flood relate to setbacks, minimum square footage, lot size, etc. requirements? Literally no one is saying "get rid of every single development regulation". So bringing up one of the _extremely_ small number of regulations that are worth having does not address the argument about the _hundreds_ that are not worth having.
ApolloFortyNine 3y ago
>If they don't like it, they can move. Can't you say the same for people trying to move in? There's plenty of places in the US that you can still get a house for under 200k.
- qpingo 3y ago
  [dead]
- mhuffman 3y ago
  >There's plenty of places in the US that you can still get a house for under 200k. I bought 3 houses all for under $20k each over the past 2 years. I use them all as rental houses. You can get waaay under $200k. The problem when you bring this up to people online is they say, "well I would never want to live there". So they are very happy to tell people that already live somewhere that they can move if they don't want new large housing complexes built, but if you tell them that they can move to somewhere more affordable, they act like you are attacking their human rights.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    And no matter what you do, there will always be people who would want what they have, but cheaper. It's triply confounded by the huge group of people who simply don't understand the math behind renting (and this includes many landlords, sadly).
    - mhuffman 3y ago
      Also the building restrictions in a highly-populated area. I remember a person on here breaking down the costs of building multi-family housing. Basically in SF or LA you can only build high-priced multi-family housing to make any profit, otherwise it would be at a high loss and that is assuming something like rent controls, because otherwise the price would be driven up anyway.
      - bombcar 3y ago
zdragnar 3y ago
> If they don't like it, they can move. Why doesn't the same logic apply to people who don't like the high prices of housing in some areas? There's plenty of affordable housing in the country, but it doesn't all exist in the places people want to live.
- graeme 3y ago
  Do you think those inexpensive homes are empty? Or that you could build to brooklyn density in those areas to build no problems. Your proposal merely shuffles the problem around, it doesn't increase housing supply.
- vondur 3y ago
  Exactly this. We should be giving people incentives to move the Midwest where there is affordable housing. Not everyone can live on the coasts. Here in California, the infrastructure has not kept up with the population increases. As a result, houses are being built in areas that were previously wilderness and now we have fires burning through entire towns.
  - admax88qqq 3y ago
    Is the affordable housing that exists int he Midwest not an incentive? Or do you think we should be giving people even more?
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      Many people find the Midwest winters unpleasant, and many Midwest states lack variety in outdoor terrain. On top of that, finding a job can be quite a bit more work if it is a career that can't work from home and you don't want a long commut., Many types of jobs are much easier to come by in urban areas, even in the Midwest. That said, there's plenty of great places to live here, and significantly lower costs of living too.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        Or to factor it out, the incentive should be (perhaps) for businesses to allow "state agnostic" remote work, or give incentives to move to lower cost of living areas. The problem with those things is the main decision is made by people who are not affected by the high cost of living; Musk doesn't notice the difference in housing cost between Texas and California, even if his employees would.
ClarityJones 3y ago
> The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. The problem with new housing development is that only large corporate investors are allowed to develop. I am very NIMBY as it relates to building apartments next-door, because I am prohibited from building apartments on my lot. I'm all for reducing land use restrictions, but it should be done in a neutral fashion that doesn't advantage those with the capital to hire real-estate lawyers.
- mlsu 3y ago
  Why is it a problem for large corporate investors to develop? I've never understood this. New things are being built, who cares who builds them?
  - ClarityJones 3y ago
    I care because I want to develop my own land.
jahewson 3y ago
a) What major population center does not have distorted (high) housing costs relative to income? b) Does the answer to a) have slums?
adverbly 3y ago
I'd argue the solution is even simpler and has been known for decades. Land value tax.
- akvadrako 3y ago
  I agree LVT is at least worth trying. There seems to be something about simple solutions that makes people distrust them. We are more likely to get a 10000-page micro-managing land use policy with a whole new agency that can never hope to be as efficient as a single flat tax and free market.

foofie 3y ago

> The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. I think that most jurisdictions already have the legal tools they need to put the public good in front of special interest groups, in the form of eminent domain laws. It's just that the policial will is just not there.

bobthepanda 3y ago
Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights. Really this is a case where states should pre-empt localities.
- foofie 3y ago
  > Eminent domain is not cheap to use given the fair market value compensation and the almost guaranteed legal fights. I don't understand what point you tried to make. Fair market value is what you expect to pay anyway, and the point of eminent domain is not to fleece property owners. Legal disputes are also not a problem, and quite expectable. It's part of the checks and balances of not having corrupt government officials just steal property to hand it over to the highest bidder. The key factor is political will. Government officials need to fight to get this sort of project through, and be able to invest their time and effort to navigate political chicanery.
carbocation 3y ago
My impression is that you don't need eminent domain takings for this, you just need higher level government (e.g., states) to set more rules around how restrictive local residential zoning is allowed to be.

mrkstu 3y ago

Well, depends on the level of government you're talking about. If it is local, then if local homeowners (who are local voters) don't want the development, it is eminently 'democratic.'

afavour 3y ago
I think it's an interesting question. If I stop my neighbor from building an extension that's 1v1. Doesn't map easily to "democracy". Now, if I and the neighbor on the other side stop our middle neighbor building an extension... it's sort of democracy? The majority decides. But what if everyone else on our street wants to allow it? Now blocking is undemocratic. Thoughout all of this my neighbor might insist they don't care what anyone thinks and they should be able to do whatever they want with their own land. The citizens of a particular city neighborhood blocking development is democratic when looked at up close and undemocratic when looked at from afar. There aren't any easy answers and anyone pretending there are is fooling themselves.
- cortesoft 3y ago
  Democracy is not an easily defined concept in practice. In theory, Democracy is simply the idea that the government is formed from the will of the people... but there is no single will of the people. How do you decide, then, what the will of the people is? Many of us have grown up with the idea that 'majority rules' is democracy, but why? What makes 51% a magic number? Most modern democracies don't like the idea of a majority suppressing a minority, so we put restrictions on what the majority can do. Is that undemocratic? Is the Bill of Rights undemocratic because it blocks the will of the people? There are no easy answers to these questions.
- delichon 3y ago
  Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner is democracy, illustrating a common failure mode of the worst form of government except for all of the others.
- mebassett 3y ago
  I usually use "democracy" to describe a situation where there are regular transfers of power through reason, persuasion, and cooperation and not through violence or the threat of violence. I'm not sure that it applies to this case about your neighbor, unless you are stopping them through a threat of violence, in which case it is certainly undemocratic.

tnel77 3y ago

A major issue with housing is that it is a primary driver of wealth for many Americans. Obviously, this comes at the expense of our fellow Americans who do not own a home. I was able to buy shortly out of college (1% down loan) so rising home prices don’t impact me as much since my home has also gone up in value. I was able to sell the first house and roll that equity into the next house. As long as it’s the main store of wealth for your average citizen, there will be very little incentive to change that.

smallmancontrov 3y ago
[flagged]
tptacek 3y ago
Upzoning is a win-win for existing homeowners. Land doesn't get expropriated to build multifamily; it's purchased. Multifamily is a more efficient use of a lot than SFH, so it's purchased at a premium. NIMBYs worry that the mere existence of nearby multifamily will decrease their home value. In rare and unsympathetic cases (places like Winnetka in Illinois) that may be true. But in the bedroom neighborhoods of big cities and their inner ring suburbs, it's not; allowing missing-middle multifamily will revitalize neighborhoods and help shift the cost burden from SFH property taxes to sales tax (retail follows rooftops).
- PheonixPharts 3y ago
  > NIMBYs worry that the mere existence of nearby multifamily will decrease their home value. In rare and unsympathetic cases ... that may be true. It's not rare. I've known multiple people, myself included, who have decided not to make an offer on a single family home because it neighbors a gross apartment building. The vast majority of home buyers want single family homes. I don't know where HN obsession with vertical housing comes from, maybe because the majority are young and still live in apartments, but this isn't reflective of most home buyers The only adults I know who will even consider purchasing a condo are single with no pets and no intention of having a family. Even among most childless couples, once they live in a single family home they would never go back.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Spivak 3y ago

> the government no longer functions as intended. On the other hand it seems like it's functioning exactly as intended. The interests of the people who live in <area> and who elect the city council are being represented just as they should be. The argument could equally be if you don't like it, build somewhere else. Do you believe communities have any right to self-determination? I would feel a bit peeved if I and all my neighbors built this nice neighborhood and then am told too bad people really like your neighborhood so we're letting Alliance Residential buy up a bunch of property for a huge apartment complex. The neighborhood I grew up in is going through this. They were a bunch of lower-middle class people who bought houses in a "rough" area because it's what they could afford, made it nice and then developers saw dollar signs. They don't have the kind of pull to keep them out so it's about to get steamrolled with gentrification.

pixl97 3y ago
This gets problematic as what is the right of others over your private property. What is the right of an individual property owners self determination versus the communities?
- Spivak 3y ago
  If you've got an answer for how to strike that balance you'd best start writing essays for the Federalist Papers 2nd Edition. Because obviously you can do whatever you want with your property: well not open a business because it's not zoned for that, and not build too close to the property line, but anything else! Oh and you can't make too much noise after 9pm that's just rude, or fix your own electrical work because if you do a shoddy job it'll catch your neighbor's house on fire, and...
  - foobarian 3y ago
    Well, clearly it was someone else's property first, and what *they* decided they want to do with *their* property is to parcel it out and sell to newcomers, but with some strings attached such as: no opening businesses, no building too close to the subdivided property line, no noise after 9pm, no fixing own electrical, ... :-)

dixie_land 3y ago

If they don't like it, they can move. It is funny how people criticize the US "colonialism" yet feel entitled that they should be able to move into any neighborhood and drive out current inhabitants.

cortesoft 3y ago
Do you think we should not allow specific groups of people to live in certain areas?
- dixie_land 3y ago
  No one is allowing or disallowing specific groups of people, the market decides. Is Ferrari "not allow specific groups of people" (I am in that group) to buy their cars by not pricing them the same as a Honda?
  - ryukafalz 3y ago
    The market is not deciding when municipalities are legally prohibiting denser, lower-cost housing from being built. To use your example, it's as if we were to restrict car production to mostly only Ferraris. And then if someone can't afford a Ferrari, we tell them to buy a Honda - but there aren't many of them to buy.
    - iteria 3y ago
      But there are reasons for municipalities to do that. Namely infrastructure. The city next to mine allowed uncontrolled building of housing and that city is a shitshow right now. The roads are clogged and often gridlocked. They deal with all kinds of failure modes in their utilities due to high usage. No. My town is being more strategic about it. They allowed businesses to come in first and expanded out the robustness of the local coop's electric grid and only then did they allow appartments and they are doing them in stages to make sure the area can handle it. This is important in an area where not everyone is even hooked up to the city's water supply or has access to city sewage.

happyopossum 3y ago

> because the government no longer functions as intended This seems contrary to what you're stating - local government exists to represent the interests of local residents. Protecting those residents from external forces is completely in-line with their mandate. > If they don't like it, they can move. A person who owns land somewhere should have more sway over local politics than a megacorp developer from another state or country. How about that developer moves their project somewhere else if they don't like it?

tptacek 3y ago
There are limits to the acceptable protections Home Rule local governments can supply, and a growing consensus that single-family zoning is not one of those acceptable protections, which is leading states to preempt local governments on that question.
- dh2022 3y ago
  Well, the growing consensus is not big enough to sway the local governments. I guess you need to wait for it to grow until is big enough....
  - tptacek 3y ago
    The point of the comment you're responding to is that we're approaching a policy equilibrium where local governments don't matter anymore on this question, because they're not allowed to rule on it. See: California.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> A person who owns land somewhere should have more sway over local politics than a megacorp developer from another state or country. The developer's interests come from the local non-land owning residents...

xyzelement 3y ago

You seem to be coming from the perspective that people who don't live in a place should have more say over the nature of that place than those who do live there. To put it in your terms, why does it make more sense to tell existing residents "your place has to change and you can move if you don't like it" vs channel the new residents to other places where more housing is available and is available cheaper.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
They absolutely did not say that non-residents should have "more say over the nature of that place." Simply and narrowly that residents should not be able to block housing development, a much different and more straightforward position.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  If the residents don't have the most say, who is the authority that is enforcing housing development? How would that not be non-residents?
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    Residents do have the most influence and the most concentrated control. That's not quite the same as being the only authority, or having absolute influence however, and this is a correct allocation of power. Residents don't and shouldn't expect to have the final say on who can live in their area. This is explicitly acknowledged by, for example, racial housing covenants being illegal these days.
aclatuts 3y ago
The NIMBYs don't only block new residents moving in. They also block existing residents from building new housing that reflects changing tastes and trends.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
3y ago

geodel 3y ago

LOL. So people who have been living in an area should have no say but people from planning to move must have a say. > This will probably never happen in the U.S Thank god for that. Maybe checkout in other countries like Canada, UK, France, Germany or even eastern europe, further in Asia on how they are doing on housing front. For sure they couldn't be having housing policies as bad as US.

sydbarrett74 3y ago
Canada and the UK have woeful housing shortages. They're not doing much, if any, better than the US is.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I'd guess that is the point of the comment. In the US we can blame zoning, NIMBYs, and car-centric society for housing problems. But what about those other countries? What's the reason there? I suspect important drivers of home pricing are: - Young people not getting married and starting a family right out of school, making average household size drop considerably - Increased standards for construction and rental quality - Everyone wants more space, houses are pushing twice the size they were 30+ years ago I think these are more plausible than just zoning and cars. I'd guess those are only serious problems in a handful of very dense cities which are constrained geographically. The household size issue will probably level out, you can't really go below 1. Lowering standards won't happen. But smaller homes might. Bring back starter homes.
  - lanfeust6 3y ago
    > What's the reason there? The same. Canada's population grew by 3% last year but housing supply remains inelastic. Small developers have difficulty getting loans, zoning, NIMBYs sue projects, etc. > I think these are more plausible than just zoning and cars. It may be more complex than "just" zoning, but it's certainly more-so zoning than the conceit that people want larger houses. People want houses period.
  - sydbarrett74 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

notahacker 3y ago

Strong homeowner protection is almost universal throughout the developed world, including regions where the cost of housing is low relative to wage levels, so whilst it may be true to say that expensive parts of the US and Europe are homeowner friendly and have restrictive planning laws it doesn't indicate any actual correlation. New York isn't super expensive because other places take advantage of greater ability to build to a higher density. In most lower middle income countries with relatively limited property rights, urban housing that can actually be bought is actually much more expensive relative to local median incomes, though these do have more options in the form of dorms and slums...

bombcar 3y ago
Homeownership protection is strong because it's one of the things that people will most strongly fight for - it's "the castle". And almost no matter where you live, there's someplace (even nearby!) that's better (and usually more expensive).

oramit 3y ago

The incredible thicket of state, county, and municipal rules all layer and combine to make housing incredibly difficult to build. It's the technical debt of the material world. Seriously, look up your local zoning rules. It's not "you can't build a chemical plant next to a preschool" like it's so often portrayed. It's minimum size for the lot, max square footage of the house based on lot size, max/min frontage, height allowances, max garage sizes, minimum number of trees, number of windows.... etc. It really just goes on like that, and then to top it off, you can be totally compliant with code and still not be approved. Either because of local incompetence (building permits stuck "in review" for years) or because of local opposition.

__egb__ 3y ago
Many of the zoning rules you list, and far many more that you don’t, exist for valid reasons. Those reasons may not be as obvious as the chemical plant/preschool rule, but that doesn’t mean they’re not just as valid. I live near a cove that comes off of the Chesapeake Bay. We have many of those zoning rules here for environmental reasons. Water movement and erosion are huge concerns here. Rules that affect density, frontages, trees within 100’ of the water…they are all necessary for the common good of the entire area. We actually have a case on the other side of the neighborhood. A guy bought some land near his property for cheap. It’s not zoned for development because much of it is wetlands. He thought he could pressure the local zoning board to rezone it so he could make a handsome profit reselling it to a developer. As part of that effort, he diverted a creek and filled in the wetlands…and now several houses in the adjoining neighborhood flood (and there are legal repercussions for our entire neighborhood).
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  This is exactly the kind of Motte-and-Bailey argument the commenter you are replying to is talking about. Sure, you can justify some of the regulations, much like you can justify not allowing a chemical plant next to a school, but there are, in many places, hundreds to thousands of such rules and the vast majority of them are _not_ that important. How does not wanting houses to flood relate to setbacks, minimum square footage, lot size, etc. requirements? Literally no one is saying "get rid of every single development regulation". So bringing up one of the _extremely_ small number of regulations that are worth having does not address the argument about the _hundreds_ that are not worth having.

ApolloFortyNine 3y ago

>If they don't like it, they can move. Can't you say the same for people trying to move in? There's plenty of places in the US that you can still get a house for under 200k.

qpingo 3y ago
[dead]
mhuffman 3y ago
>There's plenty of places in the US that you can still get a house for under 200k. I bought 3 houses all for under $20k each over the past 2 years. I use them all as rental houses. You can get waaay under $200k. The problem when you bring this up to people online is they say, "well I would never want to live there". So they are very happy to tell people that already live somewhere that they can move if they don't want new large housing complexes built, but if you tell them that they can move to somewhere more affordable, they act like you are attacking their human rights.
- bombcar 3y ago
  And no matter what you do, there will always be people who would want what they have, but cheaper. It's triply confounded by the huge group of people who simply don't understand the math behind renting (and this includes many landlords, sadly).
  - mhuffman 3y ago
    Also the building restrictions in a highly-populated area. I remember a person on here breaking down the costs of building multi-family housing. Basically in SF or LA you can only build high-priced multi-family housing to make any profit, otherwise it would be at a high loss and that is assuming something like rent controls, because otherwise the price would be driven up anyway.
    - bombcar 3y ago

zdragnar 3y ago

> If they don't like it, they can move. Why doesn't the same logic apply to people who don't like the high prices of housing in some areas? There's plenty of affordable housing in the country, but it doesn't all exist in the places people want to live.

graeme 3y ago
Do you think those inexpensive homes are empty? Or that you could build to brooklyn density in those areas to build no problems. Your proposal merely shuffles the problem around, it doesn't increase housing supply.
vondur 3y ago
Exactly this. We should be giving people incentives to move the Midwest where there is affordable housing. Not everyone can live on the coasts. Here in California, the infrastructure has not kept up with the population increases. As a result, houses are being built in areas that were previously wilderness and now we have fires burning through entire towns.
- admax88qqq 3y ago
  Is the affordable housing that exists int he Midwest not an incentive? Or do you think we should be giving people even more?
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Many people find the Midwest winters unpleasant, and many Midwest states lack variety in outdoor terrain. On top of that, finding a job can be quite a bit more work if it is a career that can't work from home and you don't want a long commut., Many types of jobs are much easier to come by in urban areas, even in the Midwest. That said, there's plenty of great places to live here, and significantly lower costs of living too.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Or to factor it out, the incentive should be (perhaps) for businesses to allow "state agnostic" remote work, or give incentives to move to lower cost of living areas. The problem with those things is the main decision is made by people who are not affected by the high cost of living; Musk doesn't notice the difference in housing cost between Texas and California, even if his employees would.

ClarityJones 3y ago

> The solution is terrifyingly simple: don't allow existing residents to block new housing developments. If they don't like it, they can move. The problem with new housing development is that only large corporate investors are allowed to develop. I am very NIMBY as it relates to building apartments next-door, because I am prohibited from building apartments on my lot. I'm all for reducing land use restrictions, but it should be done in a neutral fashion that doesn't advantage those with the capital to hire real-estate lawyers.

mlsu 3y ago
Why is it a problem for large corporate investors to develop? I've never understood this. New things are being built, who cares who builds them?
- ClarityJones 3y ago
  I care because I want to develop my own land.

jahewson 3y ago

a) What major population center does not have distorted (high) housing costs relative to income? b) Does the answer to a) have slums?

adverbly 3y ago

I'd argue the solution is even simpler and has been known for decades. Land value tax.

akvadrako 3y ago
I agree LVT is at least worth trying. There seems to be something about simple solutions that makes people distrust them. We are more likely to get a 10000-page micro-managing land use policy with a whole new agency that can never hope to be as efficient as a single flat tax and free market.