Comment by JamesLeonis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JamesLeonis | Hacker News Reader

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> The solution is the same as every other time this comes up.

And this [1] study says it doesn't work.

> Freemark reaches two startling conclusions that should at least temper our enthusiasm about the potential of zoning reform to solve the housing crisis—conclusions that, interestingly enough, he has said he did not set out to find.

> First, he finds no effect from zoning changes on housing supply—that is, on the construction of newly permitted units over five years. (As he acknowledges, the process of adding supply is arduous and may take longer than five years to register.) Caveats and all, this is an important finding that is very much at odds with the conventional wisdom.

> Second, instead of falling prices, as the conventional wisdom predicts, the study finds the opposite. Housing prices rose on the parcels and in projects that were upzoned, notably those where building sizes increased.

[1] https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/01/zoning-reform-house-cos...

The author, Yonah Freemark, wrote this article discussing the implications of his paper (https://urbanaffairsreview.com/2019/03/29/upzoning-chicago-i...). In short, he does not claim that upzoning “doesn’t work.” He says 5 years may have been too short a time to measure the changes in Chicago. He also highlights numerous possible reasons for the Chicago housing price increases that may differ from the California proposals (SB 827 last year, or SB 50 this year):

* “it targeted just areas around transit (rather than the city as a whole).” SB 827 and SB 50 are a much broader upzoning.

* “it was implemented in a city with relatively affordable housing (rather than very high rents, such as in San Francisco)”

* “they should take seriously the concerns of local residents who are worried that their housing costs will increase”. SB 50 exempts tenant-occupied housing and reserves a fraction of the units for low-income households.

I've heard this author speak about his paper, and he would be shocked and dismayed that you are mischaracterizing it to this degree. It's about a Chicago, a place which doesn't have a housing shortage that San Francisco has been working towards since the 80s.

It's also about a fairly restricted area rather than, say, citywide, from what I recall.

Chicago is not San Francisco. Among many relevant differences, Chicago has a vacancy rate of ~13%, while in SF it's 5% (and lower in San Jose).

We would expect parcel prices to increase with upzoing - land becomes more valuable if more people are permitted to enjoy using it. That's the behavior that encourages developers to make multi-family housing.

and make current land owner (house owner) extremely rich, I don't understand why they are fighting it.

Because of volatility. You don't need a "shot at getting rich" when you already are. You much rather avoid getting poor(er).

Not everybody wants to get rich. Some people, especially the old, just want to stay in a familiar place. If you change that place, it is no longer familiar. Older people often struggle with change. People with memory problems can often get by for much longer if nothing much changes. If you make changes all around them, they might need to go into a nursing home and then struggle every day in the unfamiliar situation.

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