Happy 4th of July

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Here is a story on how local regulations impede homebuilding in California.

More than two-thirds of California’s coastal communities have adopted measures — such as caps on population or housing growth, or building height limits — aimed at limiting residential development, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. A UC Berkeley study of California’s local land-use regulations found that every growth-control policy a city puts in place raises housing costs by as much as 5% there.

What makes this exciting is that the piece appears in the LA Times, hardly a libertarian bastion.

6 thoughts on “Happy 4th of July”

  1. Beach front should be one story, second row 2, 3rd 3, etc. Otherwise no rules.

  2. If you want a taste of things, you should watch house flipping shows on HGTV and DYI. The differences between California and just about anywhere else are quite illuminating.

  3. So one large elephant in this conversation is the following – it is assumed that more housing, at lower prices, would be a good thing.

    Some politicians, and their proxies in some media believe this. I think for rather different reasons, economists believe this.

    But it seems quite clear that a great many people do NOT believe this. And some of those people are the people everybody else is trying to get near too….

    And while yes indeed the rent may be “too damn high” – the mechanisms can and will change. People want a kind of exclusion – control of density, traffic, etc., around them. If you change zoning, expect to see more complicated ownership structures (like the Dakota hotel is said to be); more funky covenants; more and more ways to limit access to a relative elite. (Not necessarily racist by the way.)

    I don’t think libertarian, or even socialist mechanisms could change this, at least not without a literal revolution.

    • Nope. The elephant in the room is that the folks who want to restrict housing often also side with the folks who complain that the rent is ‘too damn high’ without seeming to realize that they are the problem.

    • “But it seems quite clear that a great many people do NOT believe this. And some of those people are the people everybody else is trying to get near too….”

      Lots of people like benefits without having to pay for them. This is not surprising.

  4. I’d like to see California government try to force Malibu to repeal their local regulations, or make those illegal. Hell will freeze over first.

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