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Comment by brtkdotse | Hacker News Reader

> There's two primary reasons- zoning, and speculative investment that keeps good land off of the market.

While I agree with the second point, I’m having a hard time understanding how zoning can affect pricing. Isn’t it just “you can’t build industry next to residential”?

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A significant amount of zoning is about what type of housing you can build where, how much of it you can build, and how you have to build it.

For example, in Berkeley California, which was one of the first cities to implement "exclusionary zoning" has roughly the following zoning restrictions:

* R-1: One home per lot or estate, only. Bans apartments in 49% of the city.

* R-1A: One home per lot or estate, unless the parcel exceeds 2,400 SF which allows for an additional home.

* R-2: Two homes on one parcel, only.

* R-2A: One home per every 1,650 square feet on a parcel. A typical residential parcel in Berkeley is about 5,300 square ft thus commonly three homes maximum.

[source](https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/berkeleys-upzoning-would...)

Not in the US. It is segregating cities between places people work at, places people shop at, places people live in buildings with multiple units and places where people live in single family housing, without any intermingling. Trying to build a triplex where the neighborhood might already be zoned for it, but where most of the buildings are (or seem to be) detached houses is also an uphill battle because neighbors will fight tooth and nail against "changes to the neighborhood character". This leads to the only multi family housing that has gotten built in recent history to be larger towers, which leads to what urbanists call "missing middle".

Zoning limits the density of housing. I live near an area that used to be rural, now is suburban, and zoning around here often requires more than 1 acre per house.

The major developers are able to figure out how to rezone and build houses on less than a quarter acre, but if you wanted to do it on a small scale (i.e. buy an old house on 4 acres, tear it down, and build a small subdivision instead) it's just not practical.

In more urban areas, it can be similar. But rather than requiring 1 acre per house, the restriction is that you can't build multi-family, etc.

Past methodology applied to public housing has resulted in problems. Historically the method was “how cheaply can it be made so the local building cartel can make the most profit.”

America really needs to deal with the mid-1900s mafia family like mentality still running US politics; electoral turnover flushes rent seeker politicians and their financier’s political support: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766

The US was trending progressive before it opened it arms to post World War racists and migrants fleeing Europe. Oh what an ironic narrative their progeny babble today

it's also "you can't build multi family housing" and "you must include 1 parking spot per resident"

- You can only build single-family units (no apartments, no duplexes, etc.) - Each lot must be at least a half acre - You must have at least one (or two) parking spots per lot. - You must have multiple stairwells and an elevator for any multi-floor shared units.

And on. And on. And on. Zoning and building restrictions are an absolute gauntlet in many places. For an extreme example, check this out: https://reason.com/video/2018/12/27/san-francisco-mission-ho... (He did eventually succeed, but the cost and effort was tremendous.)

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