IMO as an architect, energy regulations are among the most pointless impediments to affordable housing. They insist that a home buyer not be allowed to make the normal cost and functional tradeoffs between upfront vs ongoing costs/benefits in support of the "collective good". Yet the codes allow a 2 person household to build a 40 room mansion as long as it's "energy efficient". And since the codes only apply to new construction (and houses last many decades) the overall effect on total energy use is tiny. Meanwhile my clients also have to pay me extra for a detailed and highly arbitrary energy analysis of any house design. All this insanity was justified because 4 decades ago all experts knew for certain that the world was running out of oil in a few years. Those same experts now know for certain that energy use is causing catastrophic climate change. I hope you covered all this in the book.
You're right, but I'm afraid my book doesn't discuss these regs. Almost all research focuses on land use rather than building codes. An architect I talked to last night told me that the stuff I discuss adds 100% to cost, while building codes add another 20%.
On the tweet, the simplest test would be open borders between the US and EU. I say almost all population flows would be from the EU-->US, with just a trickle the other way.
I remember, hwhen I was in Lithuania, a Lithuanian girl at my hostel offered to pay me $10,000 to marry her so she could get Canadian Citizenship. I was shocked! I could understand preferring Canada over Lithuania but is Canada really that much more desirable than Ireland, the UK (at the time), France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, etc.???
If you only speak English (and Lithuania), that just leaves the US, UK, and Ireland. If you have no personal ties to any of these countries, I'd say the U.S. is way more than $10k better!
To repeat myself: The biggest success stories are places that Texas that *stay* fairly unregulated. California, Oregon, and Minnesota have all had wins against single-family zoning, but I fear that the deregulation is so qualified that it won't change too much.
good question! I can speak a little bit to this thru my anecdotal experience. I remember talking to some Filipinos about zoning regulation and them referring to it as: "First World Problems". I lived for a year in the Philippines and I can attest that there are a LOT of high-rises in Manila. I once had to evacuate from the 41st floor due to a minor earthquake. I believe evacuation is actually not the safest course of action in an Earthquake but that's hwhat security was telling us to do...
I have noticed that in both the Philippines and Indonesia, you see a lot more shacks next to mansions.
In the Philippines, it seems most neighbourhoods have Home Owner's Associations (HOAs) and I have heard of some HOAs imposing some building regulations... I don't know if that relates to density or not. Maybe just the houses gotta look kinda nice in a rich neighbourhood or something.
Oh yay! Thank you, Dr. Caplan. You've sorta taken my suggestion! I was thinking more of a zoom-based AMA, a week from now to give us time to read, as I kinda wanted to avoid spoilers... But, meh, there's prolly not much that can be spoiled.
Would this be a fair summary of the book: "I am against zoning regulations. You should be too. The world would be so much better if there weren't zoning regulations. kthxbye!" ?
I'd rather: "I think people should be free to build stuff. You should think so too. The world would be much better if people were free to build stuff. kthxbye!"
You mention that the regulatory tax is price - construction costs - land cost. I'm a lil skeptical tho. hWhat about profit for the developer? I know you said that housing is a highly competitive industry and I know that in perfect competition, P = MC. But even in the absence of regulation, is housing really perfect competition? Doesn't perfect competition require homogeneous products? I don't think housing is all that homogenous. Plus, my understanding is that, even in perfect competition, there is still accounting profit, if not economic profit.
So, can we really say that regulatory burden accounts for _all_ the difference between price and costs?
I've received my copy today (via Kindle), looking forward to reading it. Apologies if the below is already addressed in the book.
1. Do you believe the government should mandate that a certain percentage of apartments are "family friendly"? A big problem today is that you have a glut of studios and 1-bedrooms, reasonable supply of 2-bedrooms and a shortage of 3+ bedroom apartments. So it's hard for families to live in a dense city.
2. Do you support the 30-year fixed rate mortgage system in its current form of being government subsidized? It's great for buyers but also drives up prices.
2. No, government subsidies are silly. So is the mortgage interest deduction, though I suspect government would just waste the money if you got rid of it.
Have you noticed any connections between housing policy and immigration? I noticed that Canada has become significantly more anti-immigrant since this "housing crisis" has become particularly salient.
I think this is much more a case of anti-immigrant people using whatever argument is hot rather than the housing issue actually changing many minds about immigration.
My take: people have anti-foreign bias and anti-market bias, so it can never be a regulation's fault to them. It's always greedy businesses - and even better: greedy *foreign* businesses - or immigrants.
I believe in a previous post, you mentioned that, rather counter-intuitively, zoning restrictions don't just exist as a result of rate-seeking behaviour by existing homeowners acting in their own rational self-interest, given that many tenants are also quite in favour of zoning restrictions.
I have a theory: hWhat if people are acting in a sorta "sub-conscious" self-interest. i.e. like selfish memes. i.e. NIMBYs don't exactly know hWHY the "character of the neighbourhood" is so important to them, but caring about the "character of the neighbourhood" is a trait that's more "fit for survival" than NOT caring of the "character of the neighbourhood". i.e. If you buy a house and you don't care about the "character of the neighbourhood and your neighbours don't either, housing supply might increase, the value of your house might go down and thus, you and your descendants will be poorer and, according to "Director's Law", you would have less political influence. If you DO care about the character of the neighbourhood, housing supply won't increase, the value of your home will go up, you and your descendants would be wealthier, be more likely to be homeowners themselves and have more political clout.
So, basically, it _IS_ in the rational self-interest of existing homeowners to favour zoning restrictions and perhaps it becomes like a meme and people favour such restrictions without even knowing exactly hwhy they do.
In *The Myth of the Rational Voter* as well as http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/pdfs/libagainsteconomism.pdf, I go over the general evidence on objective self-interest and public opinion. There really is very little connection, whether conscious, sub-conscious, or super-conscious. And since the probability of voter decisiveness is near-zero, economists never should have expected much connection in the first place.
I haven't read the book yet,I'm looking forward to it. When I discuss the ideas with my friends, the criticism is mostly about aesthetics. There are many cities with neighborhoods filled with beautiful old houses, and my friends are reluctant to see them replaced by sky scrapers. What is the response?
The obvious answer is that generally markets are a way of weighing preferences. YIMBY isn't about prioritizing housing volume over aesthetics. It's about giving people the choice between the two. If people value seeing old homes more than other people value having a place to live, even under YIMBY, they are still free to buy the property and keep it for historical presetvation, rather than allowing further development on it.
In reality, though, the weight of net preferences indicated by what people are willing to pay for things is generally in favor of building more housing, rather than historic preservation. That's why NIMBY in general, including for historic preservationism typically results from making certain preferences (more housing) illegal, rather than by people willingly valuing aesthetics over volume, to the point of willingly paying for it.
The counter argument is that this is an externality issue: most of the benefits of beautiful old architecture are diffused among all the people who live or work near them. In theory, they could all get together and contribute a little to buying the house, but even organizing such a purchase takes more time and effort than is worth for any one individual.
In theory one rich person could still buy an entire neighborhood of old houses and thereby capture most of the benefits by charging people to enter, but there are a lot of reasons this would probably be illegal in practice in most cities.
In general, if the utility of a transaction is sufficiently diffuse, the transaction costs of being it about will dwarf the utility to each individual beneficiary, preventing the utility-increasing transaction from happening. This is the real problem with externalities. It’s also why there’s usually a plausible, theoretically libertarian argument against most ‘marginal libertarian’ positions. E.g. should we legalize x? Well maybe in actually libertarian society where neighborhoods and towns - and nearby commons like parks and roads - would be privately owned, the owners would disallow x. So legalizing x may be marginally libertarian without being closer to an ideal libertarian outcome.
I don't think that is an answer; It is a description of the issue. For my friends, changing the laws to allow destruction of the old houses and their replacement by sky scrapers would be wrong. They have a different set of values according to which willingness to pay isn't everything.
One may also think of the beauty as an externality enjoyed by the public at large, the benefits of which cannot be recouped by the owners of the real estate. But that isn't how my friends see things.
How should a YIMBY get involved, politically? hWhat can/should we do? There's a block near my house with stores at ground level with 2 floors of really old, dilapidated apartments above. Some even with boarded up windows.
A new owner has purchased the block and is planning to build a new 9-story tower with mainly furnished student residences. They will keep the historic façade and ground-level retail.
The existing residences of the apartments above are furious about this. Cause they're likely to get "demo-victed": they will be evicted and lose their rent-controlled apartments. This is a hwhole other issue mixed in with the rezoning... To be fair, the existing residents prolly WILL be worse off. I believe they get 3 months free rent, but that's it. So, they've put up all sorts of fliers about this urging residents to contact City Council and oppose the necessary zoning amendment. They have a QR code that links to a Google form petition. One of their flyers particularly irks me: "297 furnished student dorms is not housing" Ummm... Yes it is.
I submitted a comment on their zoning amendment application on the city website and have requested it to be sent to all councillors and the mayor. I've been tempted to put up my own flyers with slogans like "Increasing Housing Supply is the key to long-term housing affordability!", QR code and website but I kinda worry about them trynna find dirt on me or something that they can use to embarrass me. For one thing, I am fat. I am working on that, but in the meantime, I fear they might try to humiliate me: "Look at this fatso, trynna defend the fat cats!" One more motivation for me to lose weight, I guess. I know on their Google Form, one of the questions was asking about if anyone knew about any "hobbies" of the execs of the developer company. So, they're not above blackmail.
Also, given that this is a thorny issue cause it's not just zoning, it's also demo-victions, rent-control and other sensitive issues. So maybe not the right hill to die on, right now.
First, it's great that you're getting in shape, but I doubt anyone will mock your weight.
Second, just posting a public comment against a popular view probably has a much bigger effect on policy than voting ever will. My public comment against GMU's "Just Societies" at least delayed this folly for months.
Third, there are lots of YIMBY groups around. If I were you, I would find the closest one. Maybe a nice chance to make friends, too.
I don't know where you live, but if your polity is politically competitive you could probably try influence either the incumbent or a challenger to be pro-development on the issue.
I can't speak for Bryan, but my idea would be a 25 year limit on deed restrictions. You shouldn't be able to encumber property in perpetuity, and 1 generation is a nice time limit.
So HOAs can still have their controlled environment...for a while. But eventually, neighborhoods need to evolve.
Edit: This was supposed to be a reply to Tommy E, not sure why it got misplaced (actually, I think it has to do with writing the comment THEN signing in, but that shouldn't move the comment).
The problem is that it isn't an issue for the developer. Now, if the developer continued to pay the property tax on the part of the property they are keeping (and that is what a deed restriction is, the original owner keeping part of the property, specifically, the right to higher uses) then the perpetual deed restriction is ok. I think most developers would fight hard against a law requiring them to pay the property tax on the difference between the current value and theoretical highest value. Of course, that value would start at zero or near zero, but over decades it could get very large.
Probably the one in India, blogged by Alex Tabarrok, where a builder has repeatedly built an illegal structure, charged rent for years until their foregone judicial defeat, demolished the building, then rebuilt.
What are the best counters to the claim that reformation would necessarily be anti democratic?
For example, HOAs seem democratic and voluntary. They can still be miserable and prevent building a little privacy wall or changing your mailbox.
If there is no counter and you just push that property rights trump democracy: how do you package that up and make it palatable to a broad audience? The opportunity cost is so intangible.
And couldn't we say the same about city and state governments? Just shop around... But most city and state governments adopt the same stupid policies. But it seems to be the same with HOAs...
1. The main thing economists say is that "displacement" is the wrong metric. All progress hurts someone. It's better to focus on overall housing prices than whether particular people have to move.
IMO as an architect, energy regulations are among the most pointless impediments to affordable housing. They insist that a home buyer not be allowed to make the normal cost and functional tradeoffs between upfront vs ongoing costs/benefits in support of the "collective good". Yet the codes allow a 2 person household to build a 40 room mansion as long as it's "energy efficient". And since the codes only apply to new construction (and houses last many decades) the overall effect on total energy use is tiny. Meanwhile my clients also have to pay me extra for a detailed and highly arbitrary energy analysis of any house design. All this insanity was justified because 4 decades ago all experts knew for certain that the world was running out of oil in a few years. Those same experts now know for certain that energy use is causing catastrophic climate change. I hope you covered all this in the book.
You're right, but I'm afraid my book doesn't discuss these regs. Almost all research focuses on land use rather than building codes. An architect I talked to last night told me that the stuff I discuss adds 100% to cost, while building codes add another 20%.
I would love to see research on that!
Second vote for zoom. Anyway, can we hear your take on this tweet that went viral a few weeks ago?
https://twitter.com/mmjukic/status/1779826873528185059
On the tweet, the simplest test would be open borders between the US and EU. I say almost all population flows would be from the EU-->US, with just a trickle the other way.
I think some of the impoverished of the US might be eager to get EU social services
Actions speak louder than words. How many would actually move?
I remember, hwhen I was in Lithuania, a Lithuanian girl at my hostel offered to pay me $10,000 to marry her so she could get Canadian Citizenship. I was shocked! I could understand preferring Canada over Lithuania but is Canada really that much more desirable than Ireland, the UK (at the time), France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, etc.???
If you only speak English (and Lithuania), that just leaves the US, UK, and Ireland. If you have no personal ties to any of these countries, I'd say the U.S. is way more than $10k better!
Oh, the US is! No doubt! Just not so sure about Canada... 😛
What are some housing supply success stories? What made those initiatives more successful at urban development?
Weird, my reply to you vanished!
To repeat myself: The biggest success stories are places that Texas that *stay* fairly unregulated. California, Oregon, and Minnesota have all had wins against single-family zoning, but I fear that the deregulation is so qualified that it won't change too much.
Do you know much about what the state of development regulations are like in the developing world?
As usual, academic research focuses on the United States. Even other First World countries don't get that much attention. But it looks to me like almost every country has strict regulation on the books, as least in desirable areas. India, for example, is notoriously strict. See e.g. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/skyscrapers-slums-floor-space-index.html.
Third World corruption probably helps dilute the harm, though.
Thanks for the answer!
good question! I can speak a little bit to this thru my anecdotal experience. I remember talking to some Filipinos about zoning regulation and them referring to it as: "First World Problems". I lived for a year in the Philippines and I can attest that there are a LOT of high-rises in Manila. I once had to evacuate from the 41st floor due to a minor earthquake. I believe evacuation is actually not the safest course of action in an Earthquake but that's hwhat security was telling us to do...
I have noticed that in both the Philippines and Indonesia, you see a lot more shacks next to mansions.
In the Philippines, it seems most neighbourhoods have Home Owner's Associations (HOAs) and I have heard of some HOAs imposing some building regulations... I don't know if that relates to density or not. Maybe just the houses gotta look kinda nice in a rich neighbourhood or something.
Oh yay! Thank you, Dr. Caplan. You've sorta taken my suggestion! I was thinking more of a zoom-based AMA, a week from now to give us time to read, as I kinda wanted to avoid spoilers... But, meh, there's prolly not much that can be spoiled.
Would this be a fair summary of the book: "I am against zoning regulations. You should be too. The world would be so much better if there weren't zoning regulations. kthxbye!" ?
I'd rather: "I think people should be free to build stuff. You should think so too. The world would be much better if people were free to build stuff. kthxbye!"
You mention that the regulatory tax is price - construction costs - land cost. I'm a lil skeptical tho. hWhat about profit for the developer? I know you said that housing is a highly competitive industry and I know that in perfect competition, P = MC. But even in the absence of regulation, is housing really perfect competition? Doesn't perfect competition require homogeneous products? I don't think housing is all that homogenous. Plus, my understanding is that, even in perfect competition, there is still accounting profit, if not economic profit.
So, can we really say that regulatory burden accounts for _all_ the difference between price and costs?
This is using P=AC, not P=MC! Which is consistent with any market model other than true monopoly.
Are all copies printed in Canada? Or just the ones sold in Canada?
All I think!
Wow.
I've received my copy today (via Kindle), looking forward to reading it. Apologies if the below is already addressed in the book.
1. Do you believe the government should mandate that a certain percentage of apartments are "family friendly"? A big problem today is that you have a glut of studios and 1-bedrooms, reasonable supply of 2-bedrooms and a shortage of 3+ bedroom apartments. So it's hard for families to live in a dense city.
2. Do you support the 30-year fixed rate mortgage system in its current form of being government subsidized? It's great for buyers but also drives up prices.
1. No, unleash supply and the mix will adjust.
2. No, government subsidies are silly. So is the mortgage interest deduction, though I suspect government would just waste the money if you got rid of it.
I like to point out that in the original US income tax from 1913, ALL interest was deductible, not just mortgage interest.
Have you noticed any connections between housing policy and immigration? I noticed that Canada has become significantly more anti-immigrant since this "housing crisis" has become particularly salient.
I think this is much more a case of anti-immigrant people using whatever argument is hot rather than the housing issue actually changing many minds about immigration.
My take: people have anti-foreign bias and anti-market bias, so it can never be a regulation's fault to them. It's always greedy businesses - and even better: greedy *foreign* businesses - or immigrants.
Red Stats are pro-market and anti-immigrant. Blue States are pro-immigrant and anti-market.
Pro-market people notice that immigrants are welfare sponges that vote for anti-market democrats.
I believe in a previous post, you mentioned that, rather counter-intuitively, zoning restrictions don't just exist as a result of rate-seeking behaviour by existing homeowners acting in their own rational self-interest, given that many tenants are also quite in favour of zoning restrictions.
I have a theory: hWhat if people are acting in a sorta "sub-conscious" self-interest. i.e. like selfish memes. i.e. NIMBYs don't exactly know hWHY the "character of the neighbourhood" is so important to them, but caring about the "character of the neighbourhood" is a trait that's more "fit for survival" than NOT caring of the "character of the neighbourhood". i.e. If you buy a house and you don't care about the "character of the neighbourhood and your neighbours don't either, housing supply might increase, the value of your house might go down and thus, you and your descendants will be poorer and, according to "Director's Law", you would have less political influence. If you DO care about the character of the neighbourhood, housing supply won't increase, the value of your home will go up, you and your descendants would be wealthier, be more likely to be homeowners themselves and have more political clout.
So, basically, it _IS_ in the rational self-interest of existing homeowners to favour zoning restrictions and perhaps it becomes like a meme and people favour such restrictions without even knowing exactly hwhy they do.
hWhat do you think?
In *The Myth of the Rational Voter* as well as http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/pdfs/libagainsteconomism.pdf, I go over the general evidence on objective self-interest and public opinion. There really is very little connection, whether conscious, sub-conscious, or super-conscious. And since the probability of voter decisiveness is near-zero, economists never should have expected much connection in the first place.
I was just typing out this exact answer for you and you beat me to it! Great minds think alike! :)
I haven't read the book yet,I'm looking forward to it. When I discuss the ideas with my friends, the criticism is mostly about aesthetics. There are many cities with neighborhoods filled with beautiful old houses, and my friends are reluctant to see them replaced by sky scrapers. What is the response?
Great question, which is coincidentally the topic of my first piece on the Cato blog. Posting soon!
To your credit, Omer, I think almost none of us have read the book yet. It was just released today!
The obvious answer is that generally markets are a way of weighing preferences. YIMBY isn't about prioritizing housing volume over aesthetics. It's about giving people the choice between the two. If people value seeing old homes more than other people value having a place to live, even under YIMBY, they are still free to buy the property and keep it for historical presetvation, rather than allowing further development on it.
In reality, though, the weight of net preferences indicated by what people are willing to pay for things is generally in favor of building more housing, rather than historic preservation. That's why NIMBY in general, including for historic preservationism typically results from making certain preferences (more housing) illegal, rather than by people willingly valuing aesthetics over volume, to the point of willingly paying for it.
The counter argument is that this is an externality issue: most of the benefits of beautiful old architecture are diffused among all the people who live or work near them. In theory, they could all get together and contribute a little to buying the house, but even organizing such a purchase takes more time and effort than is worth for any one individual.
In theory one rich person could still buy an entire neighborhood of old houses and thereby capture most of the benefits by charging people to enter, but there are a lot of reasons this would probably be illegal in practice in most cities.
In general, if the utility of a transaction is sufficiently diffuse, the transaction costs of being it about will dwarf the utility to each individual beneficiary, preventing the utility-increasing transaction from happening. This is the real problem with externalities. It’s also why there’s usually a plausible, theoretically libertarian argument against most ‘marginal libertarian’ positions. E.g. should we legalize x? Well maybe in actually libertarian society where neighborhoods and towns - and nearby commons like parks and roads - would be privately owned, the owners would disallow x. So legalizing x may be marginally libertarian without being closer to an ideal libertarian outcome.
I don't think that is an answer; It is a description of the issue. For my friends, changing the laws to allow destruction of the old houses and their replacement by sky scrapers would be wrong. They have a different set of values according to which willingness to pay isn't everything.
One may also think of the beauty as an externality enjoyed by the public at large, the benefits of which cannot be recouped by the owners of the real estate. But that isn't how my friends see things.
And why assume that new buildings wouldn't be more beautiful than the ones they replace?
If they aren't willing to pay in order to continue to receive the externality, they don't deserve to get it.
How should a YIMBY get involved, politically? hWhat can/should we do? There's a block near my house with stores at ground level with 2 floors of really old, dilapidated apartments above. Some even with boarded up windows.
A new owner has purchased the block and is planning to build a new 9-story tower with mainly furnished student residences. They will keep the historic façade and ground-level retail.
The existing residences of the apartments above are furious about this. Cause they're likely to get "demo-victed": they will be evicted and lose their rent-controlled apartments. This is a hwhole other issue mixed in with the rezoning... To be fair, the existing residents prolly WILL be worse off. I believe they get 3 months free rent, but that's it. So, they've put up all sorts of fliers about this urging residents to contact City Council and oppose the necessary zoning amendment. They have a QR code that links to a Google form petition. One of their flyers particularly irks me: "297 furnished student dorms is not housing" Ummm... Yes it is.
I submitted a comment on their zoning amendment application on the city website and have requested it to be sent to all councillors and the mayor. I've been tempted to put up my own flyers with slogans like "Increasing Housing Supply is the key to long-term housing affordability!", QR code and website but I kinda worry about them trynna find dirt on me or something that they can use to embarrass me. For one thing, I am fat. I am working on that, but in the meantime, I fear they might try to humiliate me: "Look at this fatso, trynna defend the fat cats!" One more motivation for me to lose weight, I guess. I know on their Google Form, one of the questions was asking about if anyone knew about any "hobbies" of the execs of the developer company. So, they're not above blackmail.
Also, given that this is a thorny issue cause it's not just zoning, it's also demo-victions, rent-control and other sensitive issues. So maybe not the right hill to die on, right now.
I don't know. hWhat do you think?
First, it's great that you're getting in shape, but I doubt anyone will mock your weight.
Second, just posting a public comment against a popular view probably has a much bigger effect on policy than voting ever will. My public comment against GMU's "Just Societies" at least delayed this folly for months.
Third, there are lots of YIMBY groups around. If I were you, I would find the closest one. Maybe a nice chance to make friends, too.
As far as I know, there are no YIMBY groups in my area. And I have been looking!
I don't know where you live, but if your polity is politically competitive you could probably try influence either the incumbent or a challenger to be pro-development on the issue.
I can't speak for Bryan, but my idea would be a 25 year limit on deed restrictions. You shouldn't be able to encumber property in perpetuity, and 1 generation is a nice time limit.
So HOAs can still have their controlled environment...for a while. But eventually, neighborhoods need to evolve.
Edit: This was supposed to be a reply to Tommy E, not sure why it got misplaced (actually, I think it has to do with writing the comment THEN signing in, but that shouldn't move the comment).
I'd say that if it's an issue, the developer can include the 25-year limit in the original terms.
The problem is that it isn't an issue for the developer. Now, if the developer continued to pay the property tax on the part of the property they are keeping (and that is what a deed restriction is, the original owner keeping part of the property, specifically, the right to higher uses) then the perpetual deed restriction is ok. I think most developers would fight hard against a law requiring them to pay the property tax on the difference between the current value and theoretical highest value. Of course, that value would start at zero or near zero, but over decades it could get very large.
What’s the most absurd housing or building regulation you’ve come across in your research?
Probably the one in India, blogged by Alex Tabarrok, where a builder has repeatedly built an illegal structure, charged rent for years until their foregone judicial defeat, demolished the building, then rebuilt.
LOL!
What are the best counters to the claim that reformation would necessarily be anti democratic?
For example, HOAs seem democratic and voluntary. They can still be miserable and prevent building a little privacy wall or changing your mailbox.
If there is no counter and you just push that property rights trump democracy: how do you package that up and make it palatable to a broad audience? The opportunity cost is so intangible.
HOAs are often annoying, but they vary widely. So just shop around, it's a good compromise.
And couldn't we say the same about city and state governments? Just shop around... But most city and state governments adopt the same stupid policies. But it seems to be the same with HOAs...
Are HOAs government though? hWhat's the difference?
I think my 25 year limit on deed restrictions is a better compromise.
This might be tough to answer but is really important. Lots of NIMBY and anti-gentrification groups oppose new housing due to displacement concerns.
1. What are the actual numbers of displacement? Ive seen some studies that it's overblown.
2. What are the improved outcomes for the residents that do stay? For example less crime, more job opportunities, better social connections.
1. The main thing economists say is that "displacement" is the wrong metric. All progress hurts someone. It's better to focus on overall housing prices than whether particular people have to move.
2. Yes, all of the above!