| It may never be cheap, but it should be possible to drive down the cost of housing to the cost of construction. A big part of getting lots of building done is to take a chainsaw to existing regulation. * No minimum lot size * No parking space requirements * No single family zoning in the city - minimum is multi-family, 15 stories. * No requirement to match the character of the neighborhood * No height based additional setbacks * No rent control * Get rid of the anti-dorm laws[1] * No historical preservation without the city buying the property in question * No building plan for the city - replace it with a "shall issue" policy where the city has to have some affirmative reason to block the permit or it gets issued by default. There's probably a bunch more that should probably be done away with; those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. --- 1. It's very common in cities to ban dwellings that house more than x (typically 4) un-related adults. |