America's housing situation continues to be zoning-driven. Cities where the jobs are located constrain housing supply via capricious zoning policies designed sp

America's housing situation continues to be zoning-driven. Cities where the jobs are located constrain housing supply via capricious zoning policies designed specifically to make housing more expensive. It is done to the benefit of existing landowners who vote for them, naturally, as landowners tend to be older, wealthier and voracious voters. Sure there's plenty of houses in Detroit but you can't commute from Detroit to NYC or the Bay Area. Single-family zoning was pioneered in Berkeley in 1916 specifically to prevent minorities from moving to white neighborhoods in Berkeley by pricing them out. After the Fair Housing Act passed outlawing restrictive covenants it became one of the most powerful lawful weapons to enforce class and race segregation in cities. [0] Now 96% of all residential land in California, over half of the Bay Area and 2/3 of SF is single-family exclusive zoning. The Bay Area, the single most economically productive place in the entire US has a population density of 600 people per square mile, in line with an average European agrarian hamlet. Housing is not the only market in the history of the world that is immune to supply and demand. When supply is constrained to below demand, pricing rises to the highest level the market can bear. When supply exceeds demand, prices fall towards the cost of construction. The premium capricious zoning policy in SF creates is estimated at $400,000 per unit. [1] I don't understand how progressives took up the mantle of "no more housing thanks we're good, let's just apply rent control" as if rent control actually helps. In the face of an expanding population this is outright regressive policy. Studies in SF show that it reduced supply and increased prices. [2] If you have enough supply, prices don't increase, so you don't need rent control. [edit] I once again remind readers that the housing market is interstate commerce and the federal government has the power to overturn all these silly zoning shenanigans. Japanese-style federalized zoning is a great way out of this. The Fair Housing Act itself was passed under the justification that housing is interstate commerce via the Dormant Commerce Clause. [3, 4] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage [2] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/effects-rent-control-expansion-tenants-landlords-inequality-evidence https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/e... [3] https://nysba.org/how-the-dormant-commerce-clause-can-fight-zoning-discrimination/ https://nysba.org/how-the-dormant-commerce-clause-can-fight-... [4] https://www.justice.gov/crt/housing-and-civil-enforcement-cases-documents-192 https://www.justice.gov/crt/housing-and-civil-enforcement-ca...