Why housing is so expensive - zoning rule are nuts

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,004
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I am all for some zoning laws and rules, but America is out of fucking control, and the middle class and lower classes are suffering greatly. At this point if you support the status quo, you are fucking over many many millions of people who are not wealthy, in other words, most of the US. It's time to build more housing and save the American middle and lower class from these insane prices to live where people need and want to live. Step one is drastically reducing zoning laws and stop forcing a way of life on everyone. A lot of people that love these zoning laws simply think cities are substandard living environments, and thus want to FORCE their way of life on everyone else. Draconian and dictator like. It's time to end this nonsense.

Here is a nice example. NY Times link gifted for 10 days


Across the New York City suburbs, a thicket of local zoning laws thwarts the building of all but the most expensive single-family homes.

In some parts of Scarsdale, in Westchester County, new homes must be built on lots of at least two acres. In most parts of the village of Muttontown, on Long Island, new homes must be at least 2,000 square feet. The Town of Oyster Bay, also on Long Island, requires that some guest apartments, known as accessory dwelling units, be occupied only by family members or domestic servants.


These zoning laws are among the most restrictive in the country. They severely limit the state’s housing supply, making the entire region less affordable. And they are rooted in Jim Crow.
For much of the 20th century, towns surrounding New York City used a stomach-churning mix of racial covenants and restrictive zoning laws to shut out Black Americans and others considered undesirable from thriving suburbs. The federal government supported this system in myriad ways, including by denying government backing for mortgage loans in Black neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining, which hardened segregation and sharply restricted the ability of Black Americans to secure mortgages and buy homes. After World War II, the government greatly expanded its role in residential segregation by backing large suburban developments across the United States like Levittown, on Long Island, on the condition that they exclude Black buyers.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 made racial discrimination in housing illegal. But communities were still allowed to enact and maintain zoning laws that had the same effect. By this time, prices had risen, and the generous postwar federal subsidies that made it possible for white Americans to buy suburban homes — but which had largely been denied to Black Americans — were no longer available. Even if a suburb might no longer be allowed to overtly ban Black families, limiting development to large and expensive homes could achieve a similar goal.
As a result, the tighter zoning laws became associated nationally with increased racial segregation, as well as a diminished housing supply. In just one measure of the region’s pain, more than half of renters in New York City and its suburbs are paying one-third or more of their income on rent.

Over many decades, these laws have helped make the region among the most racially segregated in the United States. Now they are choking New York, making it impossible to build the housing the region needs to grow.
From 2010 to 2018, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties issued a combined total of just 26,175 building permits in a region of about 3.8 million people, according to an analysis of federal housing and census data by the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan group.

During the same period, Boston’s suburbs issued 54,787 permits, more than double what suburban New York did. Suburbs in the Bay Area of California issued 63,290 permits. The Northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington issued 76,786 permits. All three regions are smaller in population than New York City’s suburbs.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/23/realestate/studio-apartment-brooklyn-ny.html?action=click&algo=identity&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=642242923&impression_id=7884d2a0-b3b0-11ed-9d9c-093e8b4c4828&index=0&pgtype=Article&pool=editors-picks-ls®ion=ccolumn&req_id=624611271&surface=home-featured&variant=0_identity&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article®ion=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending
Gov. Kathy Hochul this year is making the first serious attempt by a New York governor since the 1960s to challenge the nearly total control that localities in the state have been allowed to exercise over housing. Her proposal would require New York towns and cities in the metropolitan region to increase their housing supply by 3 percent every three years and, importantly, allow the state to override local zoning laws to approve projects in towns that refuse to meet those goals. Each of New York City’s 59 community districts will have the same 3 percent target, and New York State towns outside the metropolitan region would have a 1 percent growth target every three years.
The legislation doesn’t require a specific kind of housing to be built but would incentivize the construction of affordable housing by allowing localities to count double all developments that have income maximums for renters or buyers, making it faster to achieve a locality’s goal. The proposal would also require New York City and its suburbs to rezone areas immediately surrounding subway and commuter rail stations to allow for greater housing density.
Despite an immediate outcry from suburban leaders, the measures being advanced by Ms. Hochul and others in the growing movement for housing across the region aren’t radical ideas.
Massachusetts requires towns to allow multifamily housing near transit centers and imposes penalties for those that fail to do so.
In 2021, California essentially banned single-family zoning. Two years earlier, Oregon did the same for cities with populations of 10,000 or more. These changes are meant not to destroy the suburbs but to allow them to grow.
But Ms. Hochul’s housing proposal takes political courage in New York, a Northern state whose zoning laws largely escaped the reach of the civil rights movement. For years, the suburbs have faced lawsuits accusing them of violating the Fair Housing Act. In suburban New York, local zoning control is king and has been used to jealously guard access to some of the best public amenities in the United States, including public services, swimming pools, beaches and especially schools.
The last time the local zoning laws were challenged by a New York governor was in 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In the wake of that murder, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller tried to racially integrate the state’s suburbs, said Noah Kazis, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School who has extensively studied New York’s zoning policies.

At the time, Mr. Rockefeller called the effort a “true memorial to Martin Luther King,” according to an account in a report by Mr. Kazis on New York’s zoning laws for the Furman Center, a housing policy research group. Eventually, facing fierce resistance from the suburbs, the state backed down.
Already, opposition to the effort to finish that work is taking shape. Mayors and county executives in Westchester and on Long Island, where the state has poured billions of dollars into regional transit systems in recent years, have had the audacity to respond to these long overdue proposals by blustering about the importance of local control.
“The ramifications of this proposal to our village are enormous and quite frankly incomprehensible,” Mary Marvin, the mayor of Bronxville, a Westchester hamlet a few miles north of the Bronx, wrote on Feb. 14.
The Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman, in an interview with Politico warned of a “suburban uprising.”
No responsible public official can ignore the difficulty of finding a home in the region. Middle-class families, single young professionals and aging residents of all races are being shut out of the housing market.
These New Yorkers will have to make their voices heard, along with the elected officials who represent them and the business community invested in seeing the region’s economy continue to grow. The time to build more housing is right now.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
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Housing takes a long time to build. The simple answer is to require that all residential properties must be populated by one person per 250 sq. ft. or the homeowner has to pay rent to the state. This will also help people with problems of loneliness and social skills including the politeness required to live with strangers.
 
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Franz316

Senior member
Sep 12, 2000
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Higher density is the most practical way to more affordable housing. The myth that everyone needs a single family home is counterintuitive to affordable housing. Higher density also offers lower infrastructure costs, higher tax revenue from a much smaller footprint, and makes public transit more viable. Single family homes are fine, they just need to have their costs proportional to the amount of impact they have on infrastructure. Zoning also needs to be relaxed to allow mixing in commercial and multiunit residential. There is a reason why the most expensive places to live are also the most walkable. Modern zoning and parking laws make the historical districts people love impossible to build right now.
 

Homerboy

Lifer
Mar 1, 2000
30,856
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Housing takes a long time to build. The simple answer is to require that all residential properties must be populated by one person per 250 sq. ft. or the homeowner has to pay rent to the state. This will also help people with problems of loneliness and social skills including the politeness required to live with strangers.

Uhh no.
I live in a small, 1,200 square foot house that is 80 years old on < 1/4 acre of land.
My wife and youngest child live there fulltime with me.
Our son comes home on occasion from college and lives there (maybe 7 days a year)

I'm supposed to pay "rent" on 500sq feet of my own house that I've paid for? That makes zero sense.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,004
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Uhh no.
I live in a small, 1,200 square foot house that is 80 years old on < 1/4 acre of land.
My wife and youngest child live there fulltime with me.
Our son comes home on occasion from college and lives there (maybe 7 days a year)

I'm supposed to pay "rent" on 500sq feet of my own house that I've paid for? That makes zero sense.
He's just being a contrarian in the stupidest way possible
 

K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
45,895
32,689
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Some of these things are well intentioned policy mistakes and some, like the what's percolating in the greater LA area especially, are attempts to circumvent housing law.

Like "Yes you can build 6 units under state law on your plot but the impact fee is $250K per unit and it has to be 50% affordable. Also that outhouse foundation is a historic resource so we need a study and subsequent public comments before we decide on permits".
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,327
6,040
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Uhh no.
I live in a small, 1,200 square foot house that is 80 years old on < 1/4 acre of land.
My wife and youngest child live there fulltime with me.
Our son comes home on occasion from college and lives there (maybe 7 days a year)

I'm supposed to pay "rent" on 500sq feet of my own house that I've paid for? That makes zero sense.
It's not supposed to make sense. It is supposed to be the logical answer based on one priority, simplicity. If force of law is going to have to be used to require density only for people who don't want it, why not just force everybody to accept greater density. It would eliminate the need to build anything and would include misery for those who have no concern for the misery of those whose low density neighborhoods they are so willing to ruin.
 
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JTsyo

Lifer
Nov 18, 2007
11,709
871
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One source had that the US was short about 5 million homes. I think part of the problem is people want to live in areas that are already crowded. There needs to be more opportunities for smaller (<.5 million people) cities to grow.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,004
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One source had that the US was short about 5 million homes. I think part of the problem is people want to live in areas that are already crowded. There needs to be more opportunities for smaller (QUOTE]Well some people here think big cities are a substandard way of living and they're trying to impose their way of life onto everybody else.

By all means if cities want to make themselves more desirable please do so.

But at the same time it's a fact that many people thrive in big cities, both economically and culturally and socially and feel fulfilled there. And it's also what drives our economy, We are a services-based economy.

I have no problem with other cities becoming more desirable but they all need more housing too the zoning restrictions are terrible everywhere. But you can't just focus on that you have to fix the terrible zoning laws where people need and want to live now.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,004
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It's not supposed to make sense. It is supposed to be the logical answer based on one priority, simplicity. If force of law is going to have to be used to require density only for people who don't want it, why not just force everybody to accept greater density. It would eliminate the need to build anything and would include misery for those who have no concern for the misery of those whose low density neighborhoods they are so willing to ruin.
Nobody is forcing density just loosening the forceful and restrictive rules that you want to force on everybody.

Even if you were at a house filled with mirrors you would never see yourself and understand how purposely misleading you are.
 
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Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
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Nobody is forcing density just loosening the forceful and restrictive rules that you want to force on everybody.

Even if you were at a house filled with mirrors you would never see yourself and understand how purposely misleading you are.

i am purposefully misleading and admitted so. You are misleading and don’t know it.
 
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MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
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i am purposefully misleading and admitted so. You are misleading and don’t know it.
So you are full of shit and you admit it and how does that make someone that proves your points are full of shit as also full of shit.

There is only one truth teller here and it's not the self-admitted full of shit person.
 
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Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
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So you are full of shit and you admit it and how does that make someone that proves your points are full of shit as also full of shit.

There is only one truth teller here and it's not the self-admitted full of shit person.
Should I be certain you are certain of that?
 

Denly

Golden Member
May 14, 2011
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Where have you been the last.....15yrs? Low interest rate, printing money, housing as investment, pop grown, infrastructure, farming, corruption, labor shortage, wfh, air bnb and inflation.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,004
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Where have you been the last.....15yrs? Low interest rate, printing money, housing as investment, pop grown, infrastructure, farming, corruption, labor shortage, wfh, air bnb and inflation.

It's funny, in all your statements you did not address zoning as an issue here.
 
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dawp

Lifer
Jul 2, 2005
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Pohemi

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2004
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another issue to factor in is all the homes being bought up by wall street and boosting rents sky high

Pssst...post #7...lol

It's an excellent point though that can't be brought up enough in regards to housing costs and shortages.


This is the stat that always confounds me. If there is a shortage of 5 million homes, but 16 million vacant residences...besides CoL, what the hell is the disconnect here? Why so many empty on a rotating basis?
 
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Dec 10, 2005
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A good zoning law, prevent stuff like this from happening

They tell you in their public filings why they do this: restrictive zoning means profits to be had as housing continues to skyrocket. They've also only bought a tiny fraction of homes.

Let's stick it to these people by allowing more to be built.

Also, small landlords can also be fucking shits, so it's not like big landlord bad, little landlord good...
 

K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
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This is the stat that always confounds me. If there is a shortage of 5 million homes, but 16 million vacant residences...besides CoL, what the hell is the disconnect here? Why so many empty on a rotating basis?

Lots of dead or tying small towns in America. Most simply the vacant homes are not useful because of where they are located.
 
Dec 10, 2005
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One source had that the US was short about 5 million homes. I think part of the problem is people want to live in areas that are already crowded. There needs to be more opportunities for smaller (<.5 million people) cities to grow.
American cities are not dense; there might be crowding because people can't afford their own places, but they aren't dense. Telling people to live somewhere else, where the economic opportunities might not exist is the wrong approach.

We should just allow more housing to be built in the places people want to live. It's clear there is demand to justify more building.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
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Pssst...post #7...lol

It's an excellent point though that can't be brought up enough in regards to housing costs and shortages.


This is the stat that always confounds me. If there is a shortage of 5 million homes, but 16 million vacant residences...besides CoL, what the hell is the disconnect here? Why so many empty on a rotating basis?

Well if you look at the top states, it's mostly where people don't want to or need to live. And also, there are vacancies in places where people really want to and need to live, and those are often where big money is parked as an investment vehicle vs for occupancy, or landlords keeping places empty for a tax benefit rather then renting out at an actual market rate. But that vacancy stat is littered with states with places where nobody wants to or can live and support themselves.
 
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keeping places empty for a tax benefit rather then renting out at an actual market rate
People claim this all the time, but I don't think that this can possibly be true. Any tax deduction (if it exists at all, and I doubt that) is going to be far lower than profits from renting out. Plus, they still have property taxes to pay....

The only time you see vacancies like that is in areas where rent control forces a rent below the operating costs or it's just a single unit someone owns, and the hassle of renting is deemed inadequate for what they would be getting back.
 

Pohemi

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Lots of dead or tying small towns in America. Most simply the vacant homes are not useful because of where they are located.
But that vacancy stat is littered with states with places where nobody wants to or can live and support themselves.
Right, that didn't escape me entirely, it's just such a large number of vacant homes even for being spread out across the country.

The small town thing is kind of a sticking point though, many of them have no opportunities and are slowly dying and shrinking in pop as people move to more desirable locations (especially the younger gens 'escaping' the dying lands, lol.)