| > Some cities do not want housing/population growth. Why is that not okay? Because substantially all cities do not want housing growth. They're all operating under the same set of incentives. In order to have a vote in local elections, you have to be a resident. In localities with predominantly owner-occupied properties, this implies that you're a property owner. So you vote for policies that increase local housing costs, because you've got yours and you want its price to go up rather than down. Suppose there are people in San Francisco who would like to move to San Jose or Los Angeles or San Diego, and vice versa. Everyone in San Francisco wants their property in San Francisco to get more expensive and the properties they might buy anywhere else to get less expensive, and likewise for every other city. But since only the people already in San Francisco can vote in San Francisco, the interests of all the people who want to move there are not being represented, and likewise the interests of all the people in San Francisco who want to move to San Jose but don't get a vote in San Jose. If you move this to the state level, all of the people in San Jose and Los Angeles and San Diego can vote to lower housing costs in San Francisco and vice versa, and since the people outside of a given city outnumber the people in it, the balance could shift in favor of housing affordability instead of the untenable status quo. |