Is your rent too [BLEEP] high? Or your mortgage payment?
As the affordability of housing plummets,
"housing crash" has become one of the most popular search terms on Google.
The median sales price of a house in the US is $350,000,
and it's even worse in California, where it's $800,000.
We've talked about all sorts of reasons why that is, but one big reason is zoning.
In fact, economists refer to this as the "zoning tax."
A recent paper from the National Bureau for Economic Research found, quote:
"We implement a new empirical strategy for estimating so-called ‘zoning taxes’—
the amount by which land prices are bid up due to supply side regulations.
Our results are broadly consistent with previous findings
that zoning taxes are especially burdensome in large coastal markets.
However, our more recent data indicates that price impacts
in the big west coast markets now are the largest in the nation.
In the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle metropolitan areas,
the price of land everywhere within those three markets
having been bid up by amounts that at least equal typical household income."
For some examples, the zoning tax for a quarter-acre lot in New York is $152,000,
for Seattle it's $175k, and for Los Angeles it's $199,000.
The biggest offender 1s San Francisco, where it's a whopping $410,000!
Which brings me to this article by Steven Greenhut on Reason.com. He writes:
"If a proposal reduces government regulations and allows more housing construction, I'm for it.
If it does the reverse, I'm against it.
That's why I support efforts to allow the construction
of multi-family housing in areas that are now zoned only for single-family homes.
Despite the misconception, that change doesn't ban single-family homes,
but also allows duplexes and condos."
Yeah, this is how crazy zoning has gotten.
It's gone way beyond just residential, commercial, and industrial,
and is micromanaging what KIND of homes can be built in what areas.
If you've ever heard people complaining about "suburban sprawl,"
know that zoning is to blame.
He links to this really dumb article from Tucker Carlson,
who hates the fact that people are calling zoning racist, but that's exactly what it is!
Look up the term "redlining" if you don't believe me.
Greenhut gives examples. San Francisco's first zoning laws were in the 1870s
and designed to eliminate Chinese boarding houses.
Baltimore passed one in 1910, specifically, according to Mayor J. Barry Mahool,
to quarantine blacks into slums.
And as he points out, quote: "Instead of stirring up resentment,
conservatives could note that the era's progressives devised many of these rules.
Mahool was known nationally for his concern about 'social justice.'
Just as backers of early gun-control laws
meant them to keep firearms out of the hands of minorities,
backers of early zoning laws wanted to keep minorities
on the wrong side of the tracks."
Same with Minimum Wage and all sorts of laws we've covered.
NEVER forget that the progressive movement grew out of the eugenics movement.
"California's modern progressives have created the state's current housing mess
by passing urban-growth boundaries that drive up the cost of developable land,
and by fighting construction of suburban developments.
They refuse to reform the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA),
which ties up nearly every housing proposal in years of litigation."
And it's not just in the US, either.
As Ilya Somin points out, the same thing is happening in Britain.
There's a severe shortage of land that's completely artificial:
government allows people to put homes on less than 6% of available land,
making that land worth 100 times a comparable piece of land
where development isn't allowed!
It not only increases the cost of housing, but it also cuts off the ability that Brits have
to move to areas with better job opportunities.
Especially in the southern UK, there's been a huge increase in population
with a corresponding demand for housing,
a demand that isn't allowed to be met with increased supply.
The INEVITABLE result is unbelievably expensive housing.
And chances are, unless you live in the boonies or in a few rare cities like Houston,
it's the same with the price YOU pay for housing, too.
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