Josh wrote: ↑Sat Feb 03, 2024 8:30 am
Ken wrote: ↑Sat Feb 03, 2024 12:26 am
What it seems to come down to is that I believe that housing follows the standard economic rules of supply and demand like everything else in our economy from the price of eggs and wheat to the price of gas and automobiles.
Josh apparently does not.
I believe that government regulation (that people vote for) is part of a well functioning market, and in most places, people have voted for and want zoning. So before someone buys a single family home, they want to make sure that a liquor store or a high rise apartment complex doesn’t up next door.
Not all places are like this. Some people want to live in a place like NYC and are happy living there. Other people live in rural areas with no zoning at all.
I do not think the ideal state for man to be living in, or young families, is in ultra dense apartment buildings. Some people do want that and they are happy going to basically any city, NYC, or other places. Most people seem to want a yard and a bit of space and to actually own a piece of land.
I think individual families owning land is important and foundational to a well functioning democracy.
If you only want zoning that people voted for then 99% of the zoning around the country would vanish. People rarely ever voted to implement existing zoning rules.
I don't object to zoning. I don't want to live next to a gravel pit crushing rocks 24/7 or see a hog farm go up on my block. Zoning has its purposes. What I object to is how zoning actually operates in big west coast cities today where largely white, wealthy, and older people (usually liberals) use it to prevent any increase in housing in growing cities.
Just to give an example of a different city that I'm familiar with. Here is Seattle. I've outlined the actual city limits in red.
Metro Seattle has grown from about 1 million in 1960 to about 3.6 million in 2024. So that's 2.6 additional people.
During that same time frame the actual population of Seattle proper has grown from 557,087 in 1960 to 737,015 in 2020 or only about 180,000. The rest of the population growth has been pushed out to the surrounding suburbs and exurbs all the way up into the mountains. Why is that? Single family zoning was put into place by the city council in 1923 (with no vote of the people) when the urban population of Seattle was just 300,000 and the population of the greater Puget Sound region was only about 600,000. At that time cities around the country were rushing to implement single family zoning largely to prevent Blacks from moving into white neighborhoods and schools. This is well documented. You can look it up if you want.
Fast forward to the year 2024. I have a daughter who is attending university in Seattle and at some point wants to do biomedical research in the area. There are lots of biomedical research firms in the area but they are all in the central area and not way out in the distant suburbs. So where is she to live, especially if she wants to get married and start a family? Forty miles away and commute by car every day?
The greater Puget Sound area is projected to grow by 1.8 million people and 1.2 million jobs by 2050 which isn't that far away. My daughter will be in her 40s. Where are all those people going to live?
Return to that map above. How do you accommodate more people in Seattle while prohibiting any new housing in 2/3 of the city?
The reality is that 100 years and 5 million people later we can't keep pretending that it is 1923. At least not if we care in the slightest about the next generation. Although I suppose you are already a Seattle homeowner and have seen your property values go from $250,000 to $1.5 million in the past several decades because the city has rigidly constrained housing supply then I then I suppose it is all good.
What is YOUR plan for accommodating an additional 250,000 or 500,000 people in Seattle without addressing single family zoning?
Do you think Seattle is out of room? Just for the sake of comparison, here is 84 square mile Seattle versus Manhattan and Barcelona at the same scale
Here is the entire 2.1 million population city of Paris overlaid on top of north Seattle at the same scale. At 41 square miles, the city of Paris is less than half the size of Seattle.
![Image](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZUDk2OVAAY3Vp_.jpg)