[helen___keller]

> When they try to make housing more affordable, it becomes dramatically less affordable.

Zoning law (the biggest factor in restricting new housing growth) was never about making housing more affordable, it was supposed to be about quality of life (and many times was actually about racism, see redlining era)

[g2ah5z]

I was referring to Prop 13, rent control laws, federal tax breaks given to homeowners, and the numerous subsidized home loan products provided by Fannie, Freddie, the Federal Housing Administration, and the Veterans Administration. All of these were intended to make housing more affordable, but ended up jacking up asset prices to extreme levels.

I agree with you that zoning was never intended to make housing more affordable, but it's not the only policy in play.

[helen___keller]

A lot of these products probably made sense in an era where there was a massive amount of undeveloped farmland suddenly available to build houses on and connect via road - if undeveloped land is cheap, the costs of a new house can't rise significantly above the cost to build a new house, so offering incentives to homeowners makes some amount of sense.

This doesn't happen anymore as most cities are at "peak suburb" - the undeveloped land that still exists is so far out that nobody wants the insane drive into the city (and rightfully so).

But yeah in the 21st century where everyone is competing the afford the same few properties in the same few neighborhoods, subsidizing homeownership is just subsidizing bidding wars. There's no productive economic activity being subsidized like it used to be (construction of new homes on undeveloped land yields more living space for the city, which I would consider productive) - a bidding war just leads to the previous homeowner getting a fatter payout.

In theory, if prices were kept to reasonable levels via sufficient construction, I could get behind (toned down versions of) prop 13 and rent control. It's just clearly they exacerbate price issues, and to say California has a price issue is an understatement.