Berlin’s Rent Controls Are Proving to Be the Disaster We Feared - Bloomberg - "A year ago, a rent cap took effect in the city that was unprecedented in Germany. For all apartments built before 2014, rents were frozen at whatever they were on Jun. 18, 2019. Tenants in those units can also force landlords to lower rents defined as “excessive.”... Rents in Berlin, a place that was once proud of being grungy and affordable, have soared in recent years as demand from new arrivals far outstripped supply. The right answer to that shortage would be to increase supply — for instance, by cutting red tape in zoning and construction. By contrast, as I argued in 2019, Berlin’s approach falls into the same logical trap as fixing any price. In a food shortage, for example, regulating the price of bread only trades one expression of scarcity (high prices) for another (empty shelves). Now the empirical data is starting to come in, and four economists at Munich’s Ifo Insitute — Mathias Dolls, Clemens Fuest, Florian Neumeier and Daniel Stoehlker — have crunched the numbers. What do they say? Unsurprisingly, the rent controls have split housing in Berlin into two distinct markets: the much larger one, consisting of all apartments built before 2014, which is now regulated; and the smaller unregulated one of relatively new buildings... rents in Berlin’s regulated market plummeted in relative terms. But since the excess demand of apartment hunters had to go somewhere, rents in the unregulated market simultaneously started rising faster than in the 13 other cities. Newly built apartments have therefore become even more unaffordable for most people... Price changes in the regulated market dropped relative to those in the 13 other cities. That’s because real estate loses value if its future cash flows to landlords are capped. There was also an acceleration of apartments going up for sale, as landlords tried to cash out of their now less profitable investments. Price increases in the unregulated market, meanwhile, outpaced those in the other cities, as expected. But the trend isn’t as clear in this segment, because investors worry that rent controls could be extended to younger buildings in future. The most devastating charts are the next two. The first shows trends in listings of units for rent on immowelt.de, a German website. In the regulated market, the supply of apartments basically froze. Unsurprisingly, those tenants fortunate enough to already live in a rent-controlled flat are staying put. And whenever somebody does move out — when moving to another city, for example — the landlord tends to sell the unit rather than re-let it. At the same time, listings in the unregulated market increased only marginally faster than in other cities. Tenants in those apartments are also discouraged from moving — after all, where to? — and anyway the supply of fresh housing is still constrained by construction schedules. These data confirm what economists had warned about — and what’s been observed in other cities that dabbled in rent controls, such as San Francisco or Cambridge, Massachusetts. The caps represent a windfall to one group of tenants: those, whether rich or poor, who are already ensconced in regulated apartments. Simultaneously, they hurt all other groups — especially young people and those coming from other cities — by all but shutting them out of the market... The biggest question is whether this episode of left-wing populism has damaged confidence in Berlin’s real-estate market permanently. If investors fear that local property rights will be put at risk in every election, they might stop building houses in the city at all."
An economic assessment of rent controls: The Ontario experience - "The major effects have been to reduce rents on pre-1976 units but to increase rents on newly constructed post-1975 units, to reduce new construction, to accelerate deterioration and conversion of the existing rental stock, to generate a severe rental housing shortage, to create an environment for “key money,” to inefficiently and inequitably redistribute income, and to significantly exacerbate government budgetary deficits by reducing tax revenues and inducing increased government housing expenditures."
Why low-income earners should actually welcome Ontario's reversal on rent control - "Stanford economists Rebecca Diamond, Tim McQuade, and Franklin Qian were able to analyze the data of over 44,000 individuals, tracking them over 36 years, to study the effect of rent control in San Francisco. Their conclusions were entirely consistent with the theory: they found that individuals living under rent control experienced "lower median incomes, lower college shares, and higher unemployment rates." The authors of the study conclude unambiguously: "Rent control appears to have increased income inequality in the city by simultaneously limiting displacement of minorities and attracting higher income residents.""
The actual cause of the housing crisis - "We ought to discard all misleading ideas and focus on the actual cause of the housing crisis. What do Paris, London, New York, and Montreal have in common? The answer is simple: rent control!... In Quebec, rent control was initiated by the federal government in 1940 as part of the War Measures Act. The policy was supposed to be temporary. But like countless other interventions that were supposed to be temporary, the measure has never been repealed. Quite the reverse... Current circumstances as they relate to the rental housing market can be summed up as follows: an individual uses his own money to acquire a revenue-earning property, but the State reserves the right to dictate how he can make use of that property. In other words the private sector takes the risk, while the State monopolizes control. « You pay, I decide. »... Housing is, without question, an essential requirement for each and every one of us. But so is food. And so is clothing. Yet the State does not intervene to keep the price of skirts, trousers, and T-shirts artificially low, and the poorer households among us are not thereby disadvantaged. It just so happens that the market offers an immense variety of clothes for all budgets. What’s more, competitive pressures force merchants to lower their prices as soon as their inventories grow too large. In regard to food, the State does intervene, granted, but only to maintain the prices of certain agricultural commodities at an artificially high level. (Economists refer to this as price support.) Consequently consumers, including all consumers at the lowest end of the income scale, pay more for certain foodstuffs than they would in a totally free market. Is food any less vital to life than housing? It would seem that an arcane kind of logic is at work among our policy-makers. On the one hand, they keep the cost of rent low to protect poor people. On the other hand, they use their authority to deliberately boost the cost to those same poor people of putting food on their tables!... A study published in the American Economic Review (J.R. Kearl, Clayne L. Pope, Gordon C. Whinting and Larry T. Wimmer, « A confusion of economists, » vol. 69, May 1979, pp. 28-37), reported that 98% of economists surveyed agreed that this form of intervention reduces both the number and quality of available housing units. The results of a similar study appear in Canadian Public Policy (Walter Block and Michael Walker, « Entropy in the Canadian economic profession: Sampling consensus on the major issues, » vol. 14, no. 2, June 1988, pp. 137-150). Here the authors report that 95% of economists surveyed were of the opinion that rent controls are clearly inefficient and in fact harmful. This view is shared by all economists, notwithstanding their political convictions. From Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, both classical liberal economists and Nobel prizewinners, to Gunnar Myrdal, also a Nobelist in economics and principal architect of the Workers’ Party of Sweden, the entire profession affirms without reservation that rent controls are damaging and detrimental to tenants. Commenting on the issue, the socialist economist Assar Lindbeck has written, « Rent control is the most effective method we know for destroying a city, except for bombing it. » (Assar Lindbeck, The Political Economy of the New Left, New York, Harper and Row, 1972, p. 39). All the experts who have studied the question conclude with near unanimity that rent control is not a desirable policy, since it reduces the number of available housing units and puts landlords at a severe disadvantage. Nevertheless, politicians and activists remain immune to the teachings of economic science, they ignore the empirical evidence no matter how compelling, and they insist on challenging the basic laws of the marketplace."
Report Says Black Tenants Evicted At Far Higher Rate Than White Tenants - " According to the report, since the beginning of the year, "they're filing to evict residents at rates four times as high in majority-Black counties," says Baker. The group looked at four counties where Pretium owns hundreds of rental homes in each, and it compared two mostly Black counties in Georgia with two mostly white counties in Florida. The median incomes in the counties are similar. But the report found that in the white counties, Pretium has been filing for eviction against about 2% of the people renting those homes. "By comparison, they filed to evict 10% to 12% of their residents in majority-Black counties in Georgia," says Baker. "It's incredibly disturbing.""
Naturally, on Facebook people went nuts like Pavlov's dogs. Of course, we're not allowed to consider the possibility that blacks have higher rates of non-payment. But then blacks having lower credit scores is also "racism", so
Fuck Capitalism 2020 on Instagram - "Landlords don't actually do anything! They just live off of your labor!"
Since communists hate landlords so much, residential leasing should be made illegal. Then the communists will have to sleep on the streets, since they won't be able to afford a mortgage.
Effects of residential zoning density on housing price: A study of Missoula Montana - ""zoning density is a significant predictor of housing price: housing in high- and medium-density zones is significantly lower priced than housing in low-density zones. Thus, higher-density and smaller lot size development would increase the availability of affordable housing"
The same people who want low density housing everywhere also oppose new development, block everything due to supposed environmental impacts, demand good public transport/public transit - and then complain about high housing prices. And they are for rent control too. And they will call anyone who points out that immigration boosts housing prices racist
Plan to turn Toronto parking lot into modular housing receives pushback from neighbourhood - "The city announced plans for two new modular housing developments last week as part of Toronto's initiative to provide supportive housing for those experiencing homelessness, but the plans have already received significant pushback from residents who say they have safety concerns and refuse to "allow politicians to bypass community consultation under the guise of social justice."... Residents also cite nearby elementary schools, childcare centres and homes for the elderly as reasons why the development shouldn't be built in this location... Residents are also concerned about the loss of free parking currently provided by the lot at Trenton and Cedarvale... Mark Richardson, the technical lead for HousingNowTO, meanwhile told blogTO that in order for the city to reach its goal of of creating 18,000 new supportive housing units by 2030, 2,000 new units like these modular housing sites need to be created every year for the next decade — making it impossible to avoid upsetting some neighbourhood residents in every case."
Pretty sure many of these residents complain about homelessness and high house prices
U.S. housing experts paint ‘dire’ picture of upkeep, availability of private rental apartment units in Toronto | The Star - "A group of American experts who recently visited Toronto to provide insights on what to do about tower renewal, say this city’s one per cent rental apartment vacancy rate has created a “dire situation” in terms of economic growth.“In a city that wants people to come, work and make their way up, a city that is full of immigrants — a rental housing unit is the first stepping stone to a good future . . . into the Canadian dream”... Toronto’s rental apartment towers are the “backbone” of the city’s rental housing stock and keeping these buildings economically viable is “crucial since no alternative housing currently exists for much of the city’s residents.”... These towers were “built for the long term — and with good maintenance and deep retrofits, they can remain a vital part of the city’s housing stock for the next 40 to 50 years,” the ULI report goes on to say.A deep retrofit can include extensive upgrading of services such as electrical and heating systems, plumbing, windows, fire safety systems and elevators. The panel in Toronto heard that a deep retrofit in an aging apartment building in the city can cost between $10 million and $15 million.But only a small number of private rental apartment building owners in Toronto have done these extensive upgrades because they are costly."
Clearly we need more rent control and stronger tenant protection laws
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "In another case of politicians not understanding basic economics, in an effort to improve low income housing Denver is now going to require all landlords to be licensed on a per building fee schedule. In addition to that added expense, funds from the licensing will be used by the city to fight evictions in court. The net result will be landlords turning down tenants with marginal financials due to the increased risk"
Who’s to blame for high housing costs? It’s more complicated than you think. - "Consider a fairly straightforward case: converting farmland into a new subdivision of single-family houses in a suburban area or small town. To start the process, the developer may buy the land outright or acquire anoption to purchase at a later date. The next step is to apply to the relevant local government(s) for permission to rezone the parcel from its current allowed use (agriculture) to residential.Local governments can grant the developer’s rezoning request, deny it, or grant it with modifications or conditions attached. For instance, the locality might agree to rezone the land to residential but at a lower density than requested, forcing the developer to build fewer units than she had anticipated. Most localities also require anenvironmental impact review before granting a rezoning, assessing the proposed development’s effects on traffic congestion, noise levels, wildlife, soil erosion, wetlands preservation, and more. Converting farmland to housing also involves new infrastructure—roads, sidewalks, water and sewer lines—which local governments typically require developers to build or finance. All of this must happen before construction can even begin. Each step required by local governments during the land development process has a purpose, whether it’s preventingenvironmental damage or providing essential infrastructure. But there are also costs associated with the process: fees for lawyers, surveyors, and specialized consultants as well as infrastructure costs. Time spent bylocal officials in reviewing documents and holding hearings also represents an opportunity cost for the public sector.Who ultimately pays the costs associated with land development—whether it comes out of developers’ profits or gets passed along to consumers of new housing—may not be immediately obvious. What is clear is that a longer and moreuncertain process increases the costs of development. A key principle of finance is the time value of money: A dollar of income received in the future is worth less than a dollar received today... Riskiest of all is a development process in which both final outcomes—can new homes be built, and how many—and the duration of the process are uncertain... When the length of the process is uncertain—almost guaranteed when residents can create delays through political opposition—developers can’t predict completion dates. Many projects started during the exuberant housing market of the early 2000s reached completion—or stopped construction altogether—during the Great Recession, forcing builders to sell land and homes at bargain prices... Some large, national companies—especially multifamily developers—strategically target infill locations in “supply constrained” regions. Places such as the Bay Area, Greater Boston, and the Washington, D.C. metro area havecomplex regulations that deter less well-financed and connected competitors from entering the market... Within metro areas, developers can choose sites in different political jurisdictions; even neighboring communities may have quite different regulations or attitudes toward development. In jurisdictions where the development process is highly discretionary, barriers to development can vary across neighborhoods, reflecting the degree of coordinated opposition from existing residents. Regulations also influence developers’ decisions about what type of housing to build. In locations where zoning prohibits anything other than single-family detached houses, regulations are a binding constraint on smaller, lower-cost housing. Single-family-exclusive zoning limits the amount of rental housing in a community, since single-family homes are more likely to be owner-occupied, while multifamily buildings are usually built for renters... For all the animosity targeted at developers, landlords, and bankers, the largest group of beneficiaries from regulations that restrict housing supply aren’t these for-profit corporations. Homeowners who were lucky enough to purchase their houses in earlier periods have enjoyed substantialwealth gains, most of which areexempt from taxation. Small wonder that homeowners exert theirpolitical muscle to continue restricting new housing supply."
Who Participates in Local Government? Evidence from Meeting Minutes - "individuals who are older, male, longtime residents, voters in local elections, and homeowners are significantly more likely to participate in these meetings. These individuals overwhelmingly (and to a much greater degree than the general public) oppose new housing construction. These participatory inequalities have important policy implications and may be contributing to rising housing costs."
The missing middle in Toronto’s housing debate - The Globe and Mail - "Toronto is preventing “gentle density,” killing the construction of housing units in the service of so-called neighbourhood character.We should be listening.“People say, ‘Where are we going to put all this housing?’” Ms. Climenhaga says rhetorically. “Well, we have tons of room to put housing if in our neighbourhoods, instead of single-family houses, we have duplex, triplex and small apartment buildings.”That sounds simple. And it is. Toronto is a very big place, and most of the city is covered by single-family homes. These zones have relatively few people, and their population is largely shrinking.These “neighbourhood” areas have been nicknamed “the Yellowbelt,” by the planner Gil Meslin, in an analogy to the Greenbelt that provincial policy has placed around the city. The city’s official plan commits to preserving “stable residential neighbourhoods,” but they’re not stable. The houses stay the same, or get replaced by monster homes. But these places are housing fewer people.Why not fix all this by loosening up some planning rules, and letting some apartments be built? Because that’s politically toxic. Affluent homeowners hate it. “There’s an incentive to not rock the boat with the small group of people who vote in this city,” Ms. Climenhaga says. “Residents are just afraid of change in their neighbourhood. And instead of challenging that in an open way, the temptation for politicians is to defer.”... the conventional wisdom starts to look dishonest and classist. Almost every neighbourhood in the city already has some mix of rental and owned housing. But anti-development arguments are usually made by house people, who try and pretend those apartments don’t exist... the old city of Toronto has a smaller population now, around 650,000, than it did 50 years ago.And the social and economic consequences are broad: School closings. Failing neighbourhood retail. A lack of private investment. Seniors aging in place with nowhere to move"
Zoned Out - "While new residents are flocking downtown, population is stagnant or declining across most of the city. In 2017, urban planners Cheryll Case and Tetyana Bailey published a study filtering overall census population statistics through the Toronto’s zoning boundaries. As towers filled the skyline, overall population grew by 7.6 per cent between 2001 and 2016. But over the same period, Case and Bailey found that some neighbourhoods declined in population, while many more remained stagnant... Designed for mid-century nuclear families, the built form in Toronto’s older neighbourhoods lacks adequate flexibility to accommodate new housing types. And it’s intended to stay that way. Per the Official Plan (OP), the “stable residential neighbourhoods” currently losing population are explicitly insulated from growth and development. The low-rise residential zones that make up most of the city’s land area are zoned to remain as they are. New single-family homes can replace existing ones, but other building forms are not permitted. It’s one of the reasons we build so many high-rise towers elsewhere, with a city’s worth of demand channelled into the relatively small strips earmarked for intensification... even adding more of the modestly scaled buildings that have dotted Toronto’s older residential neighbourhoods since the early 20th century is restricted. Predating modern zoning, many of these buildings constitute the human-scaled ‘missing middle’ of development that provides a transitional ground between towers and detached homes. Today, they could not be built. Toronto isn’t alone in restricting new development in residential areas. Across North America, similar swaths of single-family homes surround central pockets of density. In 2018, 78 per cent of Los Angeles, 42 per cent of Portland, and 57 per cent of Seattle remains blanketed in yellowbelts by another name, and gripped by similar housing affordability problems.In Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America, housing activist Randy Shaw argues that many of North America’s most progressive large cities chronically fail to provide adequate new housing supply. Together with San Francisco, liberal bastions like Portland and Denver are also places where new development is most viciously contested. According to Shaw, these communities are “trapped in the framework of past urban renewal fights,” which pitted low-income urban residents against cruel top-down planning policies."
Western Canada: Vancouver confronts its slow progress on affordable housing - The Globe and Mail - "Frances’s story on Saturday meticulously compiled a list of the affordable-housing projects the City of Vancouver has touted as being under way since 2016. She found that 3,000 out of almost 5,000 social-housing apartments officially approved from 2016 to 2019 hadn’t been built by the end of 2020. Frances found another 1,000 units were held up in the approval pipeline, including hundreds that had been promised to be built by this year under the direction of the city’s recently created Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency. Of the homes that had been built, 660 were temporary modular housing. This slow grind has taken place in years where Vancouver politicians and senior bureaucrats have publicly proclaimed that creating lower-cost housing is a priority, but non-profit developers have been left frustrated as they slog through the rezoning and permitting processes. Even after projects have council approval, there can still be a year before permits are issued. And even when all that is settled, sometimes housing projects get held up or miss deadlines with other agencies because of delays with final legal agreements. All of that is having a direct impact on homelessness and housing shortages in the city."
It's simpler to blame foreign buyers
Kelly McParland: Sprawl or no, you can't end a housing shortage without building homes - "Ontario is considering building a new highway to let traffic skip past Toronto’s chronic gridlock. So of course people who might never need it are opposed to the idea. The aim of the route — the GTA West Transportation Corridor, better known as Highway 413 — would be to divert some of the battalions of trucks that trundle through the country’s most populous city. Highway 401, which runs from the Windsor-Detroit border across southern Ontario to Quebec, is said to be North America’s busiest freeway... Opposition to the highway largely has to do with sprawl. Sprawl is what city people call suburban neighbourhoods with driveways and room for a tree in the backyard. It’s where buyers go when they don’t have $1 million or $2 million for a house in Toronto, and aren’t eager to cram their family and the dog into a tiny, overpriced high-rise condominium with one bedroom and a view of the condo next door. Residents fortunate enough to already own property in Toronto look sniffily on people who go farther afield in search of space and (slightly) lower prices. Toronto city council voted 19-1 against the project, even though it would never cross city borders and would divert traffic from its choked throughways. That’s understandable enough. City dwellers have traditionally been snooty about the hinterland, where they imagine restaurant patios and culture don’t exist. Odder is the opposition from such folks as Bonnie Crombie, mayor of Mississauga, a city west of Toronto that is the definition of sprawl... With Mississauga full, the 413 would run slightly to the north, in an area still home to small, pleasant communities, many dotted with large homes built by well-off people seeking an escape from the mishmash beyond their hills. They are, of course, fervently opposed. They agree with Crombie that it would have “a disastrous impact on the environment.” Although a local magazine reports that many farmers are keen on the colossal increase in land values they’d enjoy, residents who don’t actually own the farms bemoan the impact that new homes and businesses would have... Developers are high on the Star’s list of industries and people it doesn’t like, along with Big Oil, Big Pharma, Americans (except Democrats) and people who don’t vote Liberal. Developers would — what else? — develop the land along the 413 route. When Highway 407 was built, on a largely parallel path to the south of the proposed 413 route, it led to many new neighbourhoods and job sites. The Star built its printing press there, attracted by the convenient access and transportation routes. If the 407 hadn’t been built as a toll road, the 413 might not be necessary. As it is, it was proposed in 2005, years before Ford came to power, during a long period of Liberal rule. Gee, could that be why developers bought up the land? It was cancelled in 2018 when Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government, facing annihilation and desperate for support beyond its Toronto stronghold, suddenly reversed course. The Liberals lost the election anyway, but new leader Steven Del Duca says he’d re-cancel the un-cancelled project — which was apparently a good idea for 13 years while the Liberals were in power, but became “reckless” once Ford became premier — and use the money for education. The problem with Del Duca’s pledge is that the money doesn’t exist... Odds seem against the highway ever breaking ground. Debt and the pandemic have radically shifted what’s possible in Ontario. Opponents can celebrate while they drive past the untouched countryside in their SUVs, though they probably shouldn’t expect sprawl to stop. The blame for out-of-control housing prices has been largely placed on the shortage of supply. The Star issued a warning about that, too. The answer is to build more homes. They’ve got to go somewhere. One way or another, sprawl gotta sprawl."
America Needs More Luxury Housing, Not Less - The Atlantic - "carping about “luxury development”—or more accurately, any market-rate development—has emerged as the preferred angle for opposing housing construction. In the recent past, the typical NIMBY complaint was that new housing was too affordable, and thus a threat to “community character,” a term loaded with racial baggage. Today’s NIMBYism, savvy to a changing political landscape, makes hay opposing new housing on the basis that it isn’t affordable enough. Advanced by an unholy alliance of cynical property owners and misinformed activists, the argument goes like this: If local governments were to remove the arbitrary zoning barriers that are behind America’s housing shortage, developers would build only luxury apartments and condos. Such housing would be leased or sold at price points well beyond what regular working families can afford. At best, these units would sit empty as “safety deposit boxes in the sky,” doing nothing to ease the affordability crisis. At worst, all this new luxury could trigger higher housing costs, as developers rush in to demolish older affordable units and throw up residential towers... At the risk of stating the obvious, luxury is just a marketing term... these new condos are no one’s idea of affordable housing—prices for a studio hover at just over $500,000. Anyone grumbling about the North Brooklyn that was, however, has to grapple with the fact that these new condos are a fraction of the cost of nearby existing townhouses, which start at about $2 million. When a Brooklyn brownstoner complains about all the “luxury” condo development under way, she is usually criticizing homes far more affordable than her own. For all the preoccupation with luxury, new apartments and condos are nearly always cheaper than existing single-family homes. As my UCLA colleague Shane Phillips points out, in every housing market in North America, a typical condo will cost a quarter to half as much as a single-family home... This is why density exists in the first place: Where land costs are high, building up allows us to spread these costs across more units, enabling more families to afford a home in their preferred neighborhood... A flurry of studies over the past few years have consistently found that new market-rate development, even of the luxury variety, helps relieve pressure on local housing prices in this way. According to one 2019 study of low-income census tracts, the construction of new market-rate rentals resulted in rents for nearby buildings falling by 5 to 7 percent. A more recent 2021 study, by the economist Kate Pennington, looking exclusively at San Francisco, found a more modest drop of 2 percent, alongside evidence that new development reduces the displacement and eviction of existing residents. It might not change minds at a raucous public hearing, but the research is clear: Even new high-end development can help cool local housing prices. Luxury housing also has a curious way of turning into affordable housing through a phenomenon known as “filtering.” As buildings age, designs fall out of fashion and affluent residents move into newer homes, allowing prices to decline. If you rent an apartment built more than 50 years ago, you may well be living in yesteryear’s luxury... This filtering effect can happen overnight... In a 2019 study, the economist Evan Mast found that even pricey development in wealthy neighborhoods sparks a chain reaction that extends all the way to the bottom of the housing market, as richer residents vacate older units for newer ones. The data suggest that for every 100 market-rate units built, as many as 48 moderate-income households can move into nicer housing. If this more subtle form of filtering is as robust as these findings indicate, luxury housing may quietly be generating a lot of affordable housing as soon as the first residents move in. None of this is to say that high housing prices aren’t a problem—far from it. But any given luxury development is a symptom of—and in a small way, part of the cure for—a broader set of issues. As the urbanist writer Daniel Herriges suggests, what makes new housing expensive is not so much the amenities that brokers like to gush about, but the lack of supply in certain locations. In a context of extreme scarcity, the price of anything that gets built in a fashionable neighborhood such as New York’s SoHo or L.A.’s Venice will be exorbitant. The solution is not to stop developments with granite countertops, but to build many more like them, particularly in affluent areas. Better yet, local policy makers could simply stop driving up the price on new housing with ill-considered zoning codes. Minimum parking requirements, for instance, which condition the construction of new housing on the provision of off-street parking spaces, can easily add $50,000 to the cost of each new condo, regardless of whether the prospective residents want or need parking. Rules of this nature abound in zoning codes, including mandates requiring large homes and prohibitions on the construction of inherently affordable duplexes and fourplexes. Houston, a city that has attracted nearly 500,000 new residents over the past 20 years, reveals what easing land-use rules might actually look like: Back in 1998, facing early warning signs of an impending housing crunch, city planners dropped the minimum lot size needed to build a home from 5,000 to 1,400 square feet, such that developers could turn any given ranch-style home into three townhouses. As a result, more than 25,000 new townhouses were built in neighborhoods with easy access to transit and jobs, helping keep Houston one of the most affordable cities in America."
Liberals think the laws of supply and demand don't hold
