[maxerickson]

The planning commission in my small town recently blocked a $10 million apartment building that would have mostly been cheaper housing.

Some directly stated that they didn't want the poor people living in the area, which is stupid because they already live there (demographically it's already the poorest zone in the county). A few others said they didn't want to disturb the historical character of the shabby, decades old commercial building that is currently on the site.

The real reason is that they don't consider reducing housing prices a good outcome. Which is just bonkers. Variations of that problem will repeat all over the place. Entrenched interests are often at odds with the policies that would serve the larger group of people (and even be economically beneficial...).

[iamatworknow]

Same thing has been happening in the Atlanta metro area for decades, but in relation to transport instead of housing.

750,000 people live in Cobb county, which lies just northwest of the city center. Many of them commute to and from the city everyday for work via one large, congested interstate highway. Expanding MARTA, the Atlanta subway system, into Cobb county seems like a no-brainer way to cut down congestion and speed up travel times for workers who live in the suburbs, and make commuting to downtown events on nights and weekends much easier as well.

However, since the 1960's Cobb has blocked expansion of MARTA into the county. Many people point to racial tension as the reason. Cobb county is mostly affluent white suburbs, and voters have feared that creating a direct transit link with downtown will cause poor blacks to flood the area.

A quote from a state senator in 1971, “People fear that rapid transit would give Negroes greater mobility and consider the $0.15 fare as a gift to ‘a certain segment of the population.’” [0]

Opinions are supposedly starting to change, but as someone who lives (and thankfully works from home) in Cobb, it really does suck not having a quick link to downtown. For now, instead of adding true rapid transit, they're adding 30 miles worth of elevated express toll lanes to that same congested highway, at a cost of about a billion dollars. [1]

[0] http://www.mdjonline.com/cobb_business_journal/marta-s-expan...

[1] https://www.myajc.com/news/local/giant-toll-lane-project-ram...

[FreakyT]

> The real reason is that they don't consider reducing housing prices a good outcome.

I think this is the key. If you're a property owner, any outcome that reduces the value of your property is naturally a negative outcome. A rational economic actor, in that case, would always oppose anything that would reduce housing costs. It's a tough problem to combat, because what can be done? Barring property owners from participating in local governance?

[saosebastiao]

> It's a tough problem to combat, because what can be done? Barring property owners from participating in local governance?

Zoning shouldn't be local governance, because it's too easy to capture. It should be regional at the very least. A San Francisco politician doesn't have to care that most of the people working in his city have to commute 1hr+ to get there...that's someone else's problem. All he has to care about are the people in his own district. If he is given jurisdiction over a decision like zoning where a net negative to the region is a net positive for his constituents, he's going to make the decision that benefits his constituents. He shouldn't be given a decision like that.

[russell_h]

Bar local government from implementing housing policy.

[jdavis703]

Well you could add a conflict of interest clause. If the thing you're testifying on impacts the property value of your home then you must state that up front. Further, such rational economic thinking isn't really that rational. For example next to my home is a tent encampment. That certaintly doesn't increase property values and could easily be fixed by say building some affordable micro-apartments on that plot of land.

[ajmurmann]

I think this might be a case where we are seeing something as a zero-sum game that isn't. Property in Manhattan would be pretty worthless if we had kept Manhattan to a few hundred single family homes. Lower prices might attract more people to move the and everyday someone might want to build a skyscraper where my single family home is now.

[repsilat]

Building a big tower could decrease your property value, but upzoning and by-right construction should increase property values (because now the person who wants to buy your house wants to replace it with more than one house.)

Local government being able to stop individual projects rather than setting policy could be the problem. Maybe.