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by intermerda
432 days ago
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> In a way, places like Texas and Georgia and Ohio are far more progressive than SF or California as a whole because a working class person can afford a home. Ah the famously progressive Texas where women regularly die because of abortion ban, weed is illegal, and you can’t buy booze on a Sunday, and lawmakers want to overturn Obergefell to ban same sex marriage. Very progressive, much freedom. > Housing costs are the shame and great hypocrisy of most “blue” cities. Yes, housing costs are often high where people want to live. |
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Astronomically high housing costs are a policy choice. They result from high demand coupled with density limits, parking requirements, height limits, zoning, and other things designed to limit supply.
When supply is limited and demand is high prices skyrocket far beyond what a market would normally allow. This is why anti trust and anti collusion laws are important. Housing, at least in many major cities, is effectively a cartel.
It always amazes me when I visit the Bay Area and see how low density it is and how much real estate is wasted for storage lockers, strip malls, ridiculously huge car washes. They’ll let you build anything but housing apparently.
This impoverishes people, especially the working class, and contributes to homelessness and all kinds of other problems, but nobody cares. The residents like seeing their home equity go up. “I’ve got mine, fuck you” is not progressive. A cartel to keep prices high is not progressive.