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Comment by rhelz | Hacker News Reader

An alternate way of phrasing that is "citizens cooperate to preserve and increase the value of their biggest asset--their homes."

Sure, your home price would be reduced if somebody could build a pig farm, or a heavy-metal processing plant next to your house.

And it's not just an advantage for people who already own houses. Imagine how much of a down-payment you'd have to have--and how expensive mortgages would be--if the banker had no assurances that the value of your house wouldn't suddenly plunge to zero.

People can't afford houses because they are not making enough money. The solution isn't to make their biggest asset less valuable. And the solution isn't to make owning such a large asset even more risky to own.

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If people made more money it wouldn’t help

You have 100 houses and 200 people wanting to live there. They out of each other until they run out of money

Double the wages and it just means they can bid more, and those already owning the houses have more value in their assets.

You either need to reduce demand or increase supply.

For the vast majority of citizens the most valuable asset they own is the future income earning potential of their own body and the value of that asset is being siphoned away through ever more expensive housing.

The irony is that this is true even for current homeowners who are betting on the rise of their home values, because past homeowners made housing more expensive than it needs to be and current homeowners are now stuck with large 30 year mortgages.

> The solution isn't ...

so what _is_ the solution then? Because people aren't making enough money, and this is unlikely to change any time soon. The value of a person's economic contribution is decreasing, as more automation and more AI is introduced. The old method to "counter" automation was population growth, but it isn't happening as much today.

> if somebody could build a pig farm, or a heavy-metal processing plant next to your house.

This is called a strawman. Please try better arguments.

People love to talk absurd nonsense about how zoning reform is a slippery slope to having toxic uranium mines dug next to their driveway.

What they really mean is "There will be more traffic, less parking, more noise, more public transit blah blah if someone builds a 3-storey apartment building in my neighborhood." It's understandable to desire this not happen but, like, you don't own the street, and you don't own the lot next door. Stop getting the government to impose your personal preferences on other people's property. If you want the neighborhood to stay unchanged, buy it and do what you want. Neighborhoods are for people to live in. Any zoning reform that allows them to do so safely and comfortably (note: but not necessarily stay the same) should be allowed.

And a suburban housing development would be a stupid place to put a pig farm or heavy-metal processing plant anyway.

Maybe that's what people complain about where you live. In my city folks complain about having to live next to "the poors". The only thing keeping their property values up is not living next to poor people. It's beyond the pale.

>In my city folks complain about having to live next to "the poors"

That's exactly what the real issue is almost everywhere in America where there's resistance to changing zoning code. All the other stuff is just strawman arguments so these people don't have to openly admit that they don't want to live next to "those people".

I was being charitable to the person I responded to. But also, high-end condo complexes don't bring "the poors" and yet cause problems for single family home owners living nearby.

I can’t use government to impose my personal preferences, but government exists to impose collective preferences.

We prefer to not have murders, so we make a law. We prefer to not have thefts, so we make a law. Land use policies don’t seem so different.

> to impose collective preferences

So why is zoning a city issue? Homelessness, poverty, and blight are a national concern. Let's do it federally, right?

> Land use policies don’t seem so different [from murder and theft]

I'm astonished that you'd make that comparison but whatever. Land use policies strike at the very foundation of property rights. In a way, they are theft. For the collective good, most people agree that some policies are necessary and important. But they've been weaponized to enrich a few at the expense of the many - the very opposite of collective good.

> Let's do it federally, right?

Find a way to fit it into the enumerated powers of the federal government? Then sure.

I’d hope that land would never be considered interstate commerce, but after recent rulings, I’m not sure the Constitution is even readable by the Court any more.

Legalism when it's something you disagree with, but "collective preference" when it's something you agree with.

The collective preference or legalism that’s in effect currently is that zoning is not a federal power.

For those who would prefer to change the status quo, there’s a documented process to recenter the country onto a new collective preference.

That can be easily dealt with by graded industry/farm zones. As this report clearly notes, it has usually been done to practice racism under disguise.

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