If you care about places like Silicon Valley or New York, or if you care about social justice across (and within) generations, it's time to research and understand why housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable in the most dynamic areas of the world. It's not due to lack of land.<p>In California, we have a chance to fix things. SB-827 is a new bill that prevents local governments from banning density near public transit. It is the <i>most radical</i> housing bill in decades, because it rebalances zoning control from the local to the state level. It could result in 3 million new units being created in California, a state that builds <100k per year.<p><a href="https://standupcalifornia.com" rel="nofollow">https://standupcalifornia.com</a> (this is a website i set up to support this issue, which i see as the most important political issue for myself and my friends, and our ability to stay in our communities)
YES.<p>Seeing an NBER paper on Hacker News of all places makes me want to cry tears of joy.<p>That zoning and insane levels of regulation are absolutely the causes of the housing crises in the US is the mainstream consensus among economists.<p>For those unfamiliar, Glaeser is widely considered the foremost urban economist, so I'm shocked to see his famous paper linked on here. He's absolutely brilliant.
Spend some time walking visiting third world countries sometime and observe how much homelessness you see. When pretty much anybody can build a currogated tin shack wherever they want, almost everybody is going to sleep with a roof over their head.
The impact of Tech giants on housing affordability (2016): (graph)<p><a href="https://deleonrealty.com/2016/facebooks-effect-appreciation-menlo-park-housing/" rel="nofollow">https://deleonrealty.com/2016/facebooks-effect-appreciation-...</a>
Why not just scrap zoning altogether? Houston has, and it seems to be working out pretty well for them.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-zESacteu4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-zESacteu4</a>
The problem with all real estate development is all the profits flow to the developers and all the costs flow to the existing residents (more traffic, infrastructure, etc). I am surprised that anyone is in favour of development in their neighbourhood unless they are a developer.<p>The solution is to share the benefits of new development with the existing residents so they gain from development. Get this right and communities will be fighting each other to have developers come in and build new houses.