The Vicious Cycle of American Housing

I have a new article up at Liberal Currents.

Here’s how it starts:

The policy vicious cycle began in the early twentieth century when major American cities started to experiment with local zoning ordinances. The vicious cycle was codified in the 1926 Supreme Court decision, Euclid v. Ambler, where the court called apartment buildings parasitical and opened up a century where city-building as it had necessarily occurred in the past could be outlawed as a nuisance.

Some cities which had developed before zoning have declared themselves illegal. The New York City planning department, ironically, resides in a building that the department would be required to reject if it were proposed today and that is also, officially, a National Landmark.

Here’s how it ends:

Before 2008, even at the bottom of our deepest recessions, America never produced fewer new homes per capita than we produce today. What does it say of America if this is now too much housing demand for us to handle?

It clearly should not be. And to recognize that is to rediscover an optimism for what we are capable of if we simply allow it.

Illiberal assumptions have led to illiberal policy choices, which have led to illiberal conclusions, over and over again. Our very perceptions, our self-identity as Americans, our mutual trust, are mired in a fog of confusion.

Home prices in the Los Angeles metro area are at record highs. Yet, its population has declined by 3% since 2017. How high do interest rates need to rise? How much unemployment do we need to create? How many immigrants do we need to deport? How many Airbnb’s do we need to shut down? How many tents do we need to bulldoze? How illiberal are we willing to be to push Los Angeles’ population down far enough to fit into its pitiful housing? Or will we choose, at this late date, to pay forward the growing, aspiring nation we inherited?

Go read it to see what’s in the middle!