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Comment by carom | Hacker News Reader

We could simply remove density restrictions. Landlords are not your enemy, and hear me out on this one, single family homes are.

Zoning limits the competition for property to single households. I can compete and win against a lot of single households for land. I could not compete with 10 households looking to build apartments. It is illegal to build ten apartments on most lots though, so good for me I guess.

Landlords own land and make it available to others to use. They generally want to build more housing because they like money. They are a strong ally in the fight for more housing (which means cheaper housing). Single family homes are the enemy.

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I fundamentally believe that markets do not function correctly for goods with inelastic demand and have a lower bound that when crossed result in a loss of human dignity. I'm not sure there is a way to convince me otherwise. This seems to be a core way in which I process the world and relate to other humans. Changing this would mean that I would relate to people as a means rather than an end and I don't have a way to operate ethically in that world.

Housing doesn't have inelastic demand though. If the city gets cheaper (+capacity) more people can live in it. As well, if it gets too expensive people are priced out and leave. Ask any state about the Californians moving there.

We are already at the lower bound. We have already lost human dignity. You either need to afford 1k per month or be homeless. This homelessness is to spare them the indignity of living in a 350 sqft efficiency?

Build more housing. Remove parking minimums. Remove minimum unit sizes. End density restrictions. 8 units on every lot.

Housing has plenty of inelastic demand and it's getting worse[1]. This isn't a controversial statement.

1. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/declining-elasticity-us-housi...

The article you linked is titled "The declining elasticity of US housing supply", where as all your comments speak about "demand".

>The more inelastic housing supply becomes, the more rising demand translates into rising prices and the less into additional housebuilding.

My argument is that we should remove barriers to building housing so that increases in demand (it is already very high) translate into more houses. Landlords aren't the problem. The single family zoning that constrains supply is.

Thank you. My mistake. Either way http://www.nber.org/papers/w22816 shows statistically significant demand inelasticity with the relevant section being

> a simple regression of the log median rental share on the rental price index, recovering a median expenditure share, sy, of 22.5 percent, and an implied price elasticity, εy,p of -0.83. ... The regression line has slope β1 = −β2 in equation (5b), with β3 = β4 = 0 imposed. Both slopes are positive and statistically significant, indicating demand is price-inelastic

This is like having a conversation with a wall.

It seems like you would identify with Georgism[0]. The fundamental premise is that land/natural resources should belong to everyone, so it is necessary to pay everyone for the land we exclude others from.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

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