6 ms·

I am once again advocating for federalized zoning rules. The federal government should invalidate all local punitive zoning regulations under the dormant commer

I am once again advocating for federalized zoning rules. The federal government should invalidate all local punitive zoning regulations under the dormant commerce clause. Housing is interstate commerce. This is the same basis that enables the Fair Housing Act, and of course, the FCC's ruling on Chicago satellite dishes. Individuals should have a right to build exactly what they want on their own property, and to charge whatever they want to tenants. If your neighbors object, they can buy you out. If the city thinks we need rent controlled housing, they can buy you out, put up a tenement and charge exactly what they want. This whole city council telling you how much you can list your place for and what color your facade can be is wild. If it meets code, you should have a right to build it, and charge whatever you want. The regulatory capture by existing landowners has to end. It's utterly un-American.

nradov 2y ago
There's no need for the federal government to get involved. It's already way too large and intrusive; giving it more power and authority would be utterly un-American. Zoning problems can be completely fixed at the state government level, and the optimal solutions are likely to be different in each state.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Zoning problems can be completely fixed at the state government level, and the optimal solutions are likely to be different in each state States and local governments have dropped the ball. You know who knows better than the state what to do with their property? The people who own it. > giving it more power and authority would be utterly un-American No need. You’d just limit what states can do (if they want highway funds or whatever).
  - archagon 2y ago
    This sort of logic is why half of Silicon Valley is a Superfund site.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > this sort of logic is why half the South Bay sits on Superfund sites You think zoning solved our industrial environmental problems?
      - archagon 2y ago
        Building industrial plants close to residential housing has led to an extortionate amount of pain and suffering over the years: cancers, fertility issues, etc. Sure, the people who owned that land knew what to do with it. They wanted to manufacture chips as quickly as possible, which involved (intentionally or inadvertently) dumping chemical waste into the ground. Guess that's the free market for you.
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > Building industrial plants close to residential housing has led to an extortionate amount of pain and suffering over the years: cancers, fertility issues, etc. Regulating environmental effluence saved a lot more lives than zoning. You’re arguing a false dichotomy between deregulated residential permitting and unregulated industrial construction. At the end of the day, housing unaffordability is a political choice. It is currently one the Bay Area is making at the expense of a lot of lives. Those chickens will come home to roost, and the form they will take is a loss of local political power and service cuts. (My guess is San Francisco loses local zoning and rent-control powers. People will fight and die or whatever. But more people won’t listen.) I think it’s smarter to react today than wait for the overreaction. But I suppose I know Bay Area politics prohibit that.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Highway funding mechanisms are also problematic. State residents pay federal income tax only for the federal government to turn around and transfer highway grants back to the states. It's inefficient and un-American, essentially an end run around how our republic was intended to operate. Let's cut out the middleman and crush the federal government down to its appropriate size and level of authority. It's totally appropriate for the federal government to fund real interstate highways. But there's little real need for them to get involved in most intrastate transportation. This just serves as a backdoor mechanism to exert excessive levels of federal control and waste more taxpayer dollars.
shreddit 2y ago
Tell me you want overpriced shoeboxes without telling me you want overpriced shoeboxes. Some things just don’t work, because people are greedy. That’s mostly why we can’t have nice things.
- arcticbull 2y ago
  There’s absolutely a place in the market for small apartments. In fact the end of SROs is a large contributor to homelessness. But hey if you don’t want to live in one don’t buy one. Your position amounts to “you can only buy what I consider nice, and if you can’t afford that, then you get nothing — get out.” It doesn’t make nicer housing more affordable, it makes all housing less affordable. Zoning imposes a $400,000 per unit premium in SF. Which is exactly how we got single family zoning, btw. It was created in early 1900s Berkeley to prevent minorities and the poor from living there by making sure the kind of housing they could afford wasn’t built.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Hammershaft 2y ago
  Bruh it's econ 101 and has been empirically validated across the world: ceteris paribus more housing supply = lower housing prices. Housing supply constrictions like housing regulation & zoning are responsible for all of the rise in measured inequality since the 70's, have prevented roughly %50 of the growth in incomes we'd have achieved if housing supply was built out, are partially responsible for the explosion of homelessness and the decline of family formation.
lukev 2y ago
Zoning needs to be a little more nuanced than "build whatever you want." I'd be happy to see multi-family dwellings in my neighborhood but there's a few steps between that and buying out my neighbors to build an ammonia processing plant.
- arcticbull 2y ago
  Sure, do what Japan does ezpz. Also note there’s no ammonia processing plants in Houston (where there’s no zoning) because it doesn’t make sense to put low density industrial on land that would offer a higher premium as high density residential.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Zoning needs to be a little more nuanced than "build whatever you want." Why? It worked. People didn’t build plants near houses as soon as transportation technology let factories be built on cheap, remote land. Also, I suggested deregulating residential permitting. If people build houses by ammonia plants and people still choose to live in them, that’s sort of a striking damnation of the current system, isn’t it?
  - happytoexplain 2y ago
    >Why? "Home" is a powerful American concept. People will kill and die to prevent it being ruined. This is the other side of the coin (where the first side is "rich assholes want their property to be worth a lot").
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > "Home" is a powerful American concept. People will kill and die to prevent it being ruined People will also kill and die to get it. I own my home. I get it. But the power of that concept pulls both ways, mediated only by turnout and municipal solvency.
archagon 2y ago
By what twisted logic is housing “interstate commerce”? It’s local commerce by definition. > If the city thinks we need rent controlled housing, they can buy you out, put up a tenement and charge exactly what they want. Eliminating rent control would likely force me and my friends out of a city we’ve lived in for years. You bet your ass we’d fight anything like this tooth and nail. (Fortunately, the policy you describe would be illegal while we still have democracy.)
- arcticbull 2y ago
  You can look up the arguments for housing being interstate commerce in the FCC case I alluded to and in the arguments supporting the fair housing act. > The Attorney General testified that "the housing business is substantially interstate and subject to the commerce clause" because of the interstate movement of building materials, mortgage funds, and advertising, as well as the interstate movement of workers and their families. [1] A meaningful challenge to this would invalidate the fair housing act. This falls squarely under the dormant commerce clause. Further, rent control has been shown in studies of San Francisco to decrease supply, unit quality and increase prices. There’s no market on earth that honors the price you would have paid when you first showed up no matter how long you sit there and no matter how it hurts others, by law. [2] In a market where supply and demand meet prices don’t go up, and rent control is unncessary. See Japan. [3] In a market where supply and demand are forbidden from meeting rent control creates further harm to the market, and only masks the problem for a vocal minority. Unfortunately for all of us popular policy is not necessarily good policy. Eliminating the zoning premium would bring houses down in price by $400,000 each. I suspect you’d be able to afford to buy, and yes, rent would come down a lot. [1] https://www.justice.gov/crt/housing-and-civil-enforcement-cases-documents-192 https://www.justice.gov/crt/housing-and-civil-enforcement-ca... [2] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24181/w24181.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24181/w241... [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUQINMEI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUQINMEI
  - archagon 2y ago
    I don't have citations on hand, but as I recall, studies on rent control have shown both positive and negative effects. Proponents/opponents like to pick and choose the studies that back their existing convictions. But the whole must be considered. I'll tell you from personal experience that not having to worry about arbitrary rent increases and evictions is a massive relief that I imagine few renters in other American cities get to experience. Frankly, it's unconscionable for people to be pushed out of their homes due to market forces outside their control. I strongly support building new housing, but not at the expense of renter security — even if it means that some new people don't get to move to the city. > Eliminating the zoning premium would bring houses down in price by $400,000 each. I suspect you’d be able to afford to buy. No, I can't afford a $2M home and I won't be able to afford a $1.6M home either. And it won't happen right away, if it ever does.
jjav 2y ago
> Individuals should have a right to build exactly what they want on their own property, and to charge whatever they want to tenants. You say individuals, but this would get abused by megacorporations buying up everything and building whatever is most profitable, which might not be what you think. It would be quite the dystopia.

nradov 2y ago

There's no need for the federal government to get involved. It's already way too large and intrusive; giving it more power and authority would be utterly un-American. Zoning problems can be completely fixed at the state government level, and the optimal solutions are likely to be different in each state.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Zoning problems can be completely fixed at the state government level, and the optimal solutions are likely to be different in each state States and local governments have dropped the ball. You know who knows better than the state what to do with their property? The people who own it. > giving it more power and authority would be utterly un-American No need. You’d just limit what states can do (if they want highway funds or whatever).
- archagon 2y ago
  This sort of logic is why half of Silicon Valley is a Superfund site.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > this sort of logic is why half the South Bay sits on Superfund sites You think zoning solved our industrial environmental problems?
    - archagon 2y ago
      Building industrial plants close to residential housing has led to an extortionate amount of pain and suffering over the years: cancers, fertility issues, etc. Sure, the people who owned that land knew what to do with it. They wanted to manufacture chips as quickly as possible, which involved (intentionally or inadvertently) dumping chemical waste into the ground. Guess that's the free market for you.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > Building industrial plants close to residential housing has led to an extortionate amount of pain and suffering over the years: cancers, fertility issues, etc. Regulating environmental effluence saved a lot more lives than zoning. You’re arguing a false dichotomy between deregulated residential permitting and unregulated industrial construction. At the end of the day, housing unaffordability is a political choice. It is currently one the Bay Area is making at the expense of a lot of lives. Those chickens will come home to roost, and the form they will take is a loss of local political power and service cuts. (My guess is San Francisco loses local zoning and rent-control powers. People will fight and die or whatever. But more people won’t listen.) I think it’s smarter to react today than wait for the overreaction. But I suppose I know Bay Area politics prohibit that.
- nradov 2y ago
  Highway funding mechanisms are also problematic. State residents pay federal income tax only for the federal government to turn around and transfer highway grants back to the states. It's inefficient and un-American, essentially an end run around how our republic was intended to operate. Let's cut out the middleman and crush the federal government down to its appropriate size and level of authority. It's totally appropriate for the federal government to fund real interstate highways. But there's little real need for them to get involved in most intrastate transportation. This just serves as a backdoor mechanism to exert excessive levels of federal control and waste more taxpayer dollars.

shreddit 2y ago

Tell me you want overpriced shoeboxes without telling me you want overpriced shoeboxes. Some things just don’t work, because people are greedy. That’s mostly why we can’t have nice things.

arcticbull 2y ago
There’s absolutely a place in the market for small apartments. In fact the end of SROs is a large contributor to homelessness. But hey if you don’t want to live in one don’t buy one. Your position amounts to “you can only buy what I consider nice, and if you can’t afford that, then you get nothing — get out.” It doesn’t make nicer housing more affordable, it makes all housing less affordable. Zoning imposes a $400,000 per unit premium in SF. Which is exactly how we got single family zoning, btw. It was created in early 1900s Berkeley to prevent minorities and the poor from living there by making sure the kind of housing they could afford wasn’t built.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Hammershaft 2y ago
Bruh it's econ 101 and has been empirically validated across the world: ceteris paribus more housing supply = lower housing prices. Housing supply constrictions like housing regulation & zoning are responsible for all of the rise in measured inequality since the 70's, have prevented roughly %50 of the growth in incomes we'd have achieved if housing supply was built out, are partially responsible for the explosion of homelessness and the decline of family formation.

lukev 2y ago

Zoning needs to be a little more nuanced than "build whatever you want." I'd be happy to see multi-family dwellings in my neighborhood but there's a few steps between that and buying out my neighbors to build an ammonia processing plant.

arcticbull 2y ago
Sure, do what Japan does ezpz. Also note there’s no ammonia processing plants in Houston (where there’s no zoning) because it doesn’t make sense to put low density industrial on land that would offer a higher premium as high density residential.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Zoning needs to be a little more nuanced than "build whatever you want." Why? It worked. People didn’t build plants near houses as soon as transportation technology let factories be built on cheap, remote land. Also, I suggested deregulating residential permitting. If people build houses by ammonia plants and people still choose to live in them, that’s sort of a striking damnation of the current system, isn’t it?
- happytoexplain 2y ago
  >Why? "Home" is a powerful American concept. People will kill and die to prevent it being ruined. This is the other side of the coin (where the first side is "rich assholes want their property to be worth a lot").
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > "Home" is a powerful American concept. People will kill and die to prevent it being ruined People will also kill and die to get it. I own my home. I get it. But the power of that concept pulls both ways, mediated only by turnout and municipal solvency.

archagon 2y ago

By what twisted logic is housing “interstate commerce”? It’s local commerce by definition. > If the city thinks we need rent controlled housing, they can buy you out, put up a tenement and charge exactly what they want. Eliminating rent control would likely force me and my friends out of a city we’ve lived in for years. You bet your ass we’d fight anything like this tooth and nail. (Fortunately, the policy you describe would be illegal while we still have democracy.)

arcticbull 2y ago
You can look up the arguments for housing being interstate commerce in the FCC case I alluded to and in the arguments supporting the fair housing act. > The Attorney General testified that "the housing business is substantially interstate and subject to the commerce clause" because of the interstate movement of building materials, mortgage funds, and advertising, as well as the interstate movement of workers and their families. [1] A meaningful challenge to this would invalidate the fair housing act. This falls squarely under the dormant commerce clause. Further, rent control has been shown in studies of San Francisco to decrease supply, unit quality and increase prices. There’s no market on earth that honors the price you would have paid when you first showed up no matter how long you sit there and no matter how it hurts others, by law. [2] In a market where supply and demand meet prices don’t go up, and rent control is unncessary. See Japan. [3] In a market where supply and demand are forbidden from meeting rent control creates further harm to the market, and only masks the problem for a vocal minority. Unfortunately for all of us popular policy is not necessarily good policy. Eliminating the zoning premium would bring houses down in price by $400,000 each. I suspect you’d be able to afford to buy, and yes, rent would come down a lot. [1] https://www.justice.gov/crt/housing-and-civil-enforcement-cases-documents-192 https://www.justice.gov/crt/housing-and-civil-enforcement-ca... [2] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24181/w24181.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24181/w241... [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUQINMEI https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JPNCPIHOUQINMEI
- archagon 2y ago
  I don't have citations on hand, but as I recall, studies on rent control have shown both positive and negative effects. Proponents/opponents like to pick and choose the studies that back their existing convictions. But the whole must be considered. I'll tell you from personal experience that not having to worry about arbitrary rent increases and evictions is a massive relief that I imagine few renters in other American cities get to experience. Frankly, it's unconscionable for people to be pushed out of their homes due to market forces outside their control. I strongly support building new housing, but not at the expense of renter security — even if it means that some new people don't get to move to the city. > Eliminating the zoning premium would bring houses down in price by $400,000 each. I suspect you’d be able to afford to buy. No, I can't afford a $2M home and I won't be able to afford a $1.6M home either. And it won't happen right away, if it ever does.

jjav 2y ago

> Individuals should have a right to build exactly what they want on their own property, and to charge whatever they want to tenants. You say individuals, but this would get abused by megacorporations buying up everything and building whatever is most profitable, which might not be what you think. It would be quite the dystopia.