[sofixa]

> The dumb thing is that the market WOULD solve the problem if it was allowed to

Not only do you not have a way of knowing that for sure, history would indicate otherwise.

Housing is fundamentally a good with limited elasticity, therefore the market on it's own without a good dose of regulation could easily become disastrous.

For a historical parallel, take a look at what happened in industrialising countries when the market was the one making decisions about housing where it was needed (next to the newly appearing factories/otherwise urbanising areas). The result was people living in horrifically cramped and squalid conditions (alongside other fun ones such as company towns) which was literally one of the main inspirations for socialism and communism.

Regulations on housing are a must, but their impact needs to be carefully managed and offset with appropriate incentives, policies and subsidies to make sure housing is of good quality (nobody should live in asbestos and lead paint filled pods under a highway next to a chemical factory) but abundant.

[zjp]

"You're not allowed to build an apartment complex out of paper" regulations are not the main thing driving costs today. "You're not allowed to build an apartment at all" regulations are. End height and density restrictions.

[sofixa]

> End height and density restrictions.

I'd go with relax over end, because surrounding infrastructure still needs to scale with the amount of people living there, and having very dense skyscrapers next to low height buildings is not great from an urbanist perspective; but there's nothing stopping most American cities from upzoning to 8-10 floors, and upgrading transit and city infrastructure to match the increased density (you're going to need more internet, water, sewer, electricity but nothing fundamentally unfixable).

[zjp]

IMO, when we reach those limits if rents still don't tick downwards because the demand exceeds the market's ability to respond to it we're just going to go through another even more insufferable version of the argument I originally posted about except people will dig their heels in _even deeper_: "density didn't solve anything!"

So that's why I'd go with 'end' personally.

See: London.

[jjav]

> "density didn't solve anything!"

It's worth asking, does density solve high cost? Is there evidence for that?

The first reaction is sure, supply and demand. Dense means more supply thus lower cost. But density also brings induced demand.

Where are these very dense cities that are also very cheap?

The two densest cities in the USA are NYC and SF. Neither is known for cheap housing.

[zjp]

Well, in 1920 to live in Midtown you would have had to be able to drop $3m ($55m inflation adjusted) for a ground-level mansion and now you can get an apartment there for under $1m, so I would say the cost has dropped precipitously over the past hundred years.

Demand is only induced when you give the thing away for free.

[jjav]

I don't know where to find rental pricing info for 1920s NYC so can't really check. But I'm fairly confident that $55M (inflation adjusted) was not the cheapest apartment available at the time so it's not an apples to apples comparison.

[Dig1t]

I absolutely DO know that for sure. I personally tried to build more housing, by actually buying land and building housing. I ended up not being able to because of single family zoning.

Just say you personally want to go out and solve the housing problem, what is stopping you? Like you can just go buy some houses, tear them down, and build more densely. You will definitely make money. That was my thinking and I was prepared to put my money down to make it happen. I was stopped at the planning stage by zoning.

I was under contract to buy land and started the planning for building. I had an idea of how many buildings I wanted to construct, where they would be laid out and was starting to get permits. So I went to the city to start getting approved for permits, I was told by the employee at the city planning department that that was not going to be possible and that the maximum number of homes that could be built on this lot was exactly ONE. Even though the lot could have easily held 5 single family homes, it was zoned for one house.. Meaning that the planning department would automatically decline my permit application based only on the fact that that land had been designated for one house instead of five. That's what "single family" means here. It had nothing to do with the quality of the buildings or their layout.

So I thought that was ridiculous and asked how I could get around that, I was told that I would have to go to the city zoning commission and either get the lot rezoned or get a variance (special lingo for an exception). She laughed at me and said that that was very unlikely to happen.

I went to the zoning commission meeting that was held monthly. Can you guess who runs that commission? Homeowners from the area! Guess what they did not want me to do. Build more housing! Those people do not want to see the character of their town change, they don't want to see anything change. The people in charge of determining what gets built in cities are the people with a vested interest in keeping supply low to maintain their investments. And the thing is that when these zoning laws were set up the cities all basically just copy/pasted from one another, so they all have the same system with only small differences.

Needless to say, I backed out of escrow, did not go through with buying the land, and learned a very valuable lesson about how housing works in the US.

This is a separate issue from building codes. The building standards in the US are determined by codes which have nothing to do with zoning and can be as stringent as one likes.

Take a look at the city of Cupertino zoning map: https://www.cupertino.org/our-city/departments/community-dev...

You will be amazed at how much of the city is single family zoned. Meaning that it is required to be super low density and that even if a developer bought all the houses in a neighborhood they would not be allowed to build any more densely than what is already there.

[qp11]

Isnt it also related to utilities? I mean if you have laid water/sewage/power/gas/telco infra for a one family home, and someone builds a structure for 5 families how does upgrading all that infra work?