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Comment by loeg | Hacker News Reader

This comment is completely non-responsive to the article. The article describes a move in the opposite direction from increased regulation and red tape.

Meanwhile, Seattle has already been vastly better than SF at building new housing units over the last decade. SEPAs have existed during that entire period and are used by NIMBY groups to attempt to slow down growth, but ultimately they have not succeeded at stifling development the way SF's NIMBYs have.

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The heart of their effort is lowering the amount of time for certain appeals. It's not about addressing the real concern (the onerous regulation and red tape that allows everybody to slow down building unless it satisfies their particular social justice issue, whether that's environmental, aesthetic, cost, etc).

Cities and state governments want this regulation. They crave it and create it endlessly because it forces developers to come to them for permission.

Or it's because those with money to build property are inherently exploitative of those living there.

If using money to buy property is "exploitative", you've redefined that word into meaninglessness.

It’s better that chunk of land stays an empty lot and we all pay more and more for rent. Otherwise we’d be getting exploited!

And the best way to fuel that exploitation is to give the existing set of landowners an effective monopoly by disallowing new construction. If we instead encouraged new construction (via less red tape and other means) we should expect rents to go down as the supply expands - or at least for them to rise less.

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