> The only solution is just flooding the market with housing.

Definitely true, but much harder to do in areas that are already built up and near jobs vs. building in empty desert for retirees.

I voted you up because you're correct, in that the only solution is construction and there are people that are doing everything in their power to avoid that truism.

But I don't think it is a left/right issue. In certain regions it may be the left, in others the right, but generally it is subset of both that have investment in artificial scarcity. It's just the justifications that change depending on ideology.

I've noticed that it's super-rich leftists who oppose permits for new housing, not all leftists.

An interesting group of people they are, the super-rich leftists. The way they weaponize the environment to prevent others having what they want... really makes you wonder.

Half-agree: zoning restrictions and non-essential building regulations are a de-facto government handout to existing property owners.

At the same time, apologists for rentiers will do anything except taxing unimproved land value (which among other virtues, functions as a vacancy tax to reduce unproductive speculation, and incentivize development).

The blunt reality is a zero-sum tension: homeowners and landlords want number go up, new buyers and renters want number go down.

China built a lot of housing and it didn't do anything until the ponzi scheme started unraveling.

Asymptotically what you said might be true, but before it gets there years might pass as they did in China. It's not clear how long this madness would last if not for COVID.

Leftists doing anything except curbing immigration.

Fixed it for you.

Certainly, building new housing works well at a policy level. But calling for new housing doesn't seem to work at a political level. We've been fighting this fight ever since the financial crisis and every election cycle brings us a few victories with an equal number of reversals. And it isn't only within the left that the opposition arises; it wears red in progressive neighborhoods, but it seems to have a taste for brown when that's convenient.

I don't think that the urbanist movement can succeed if it is driven by policy wonks who want to throw out the rulebook and impose reforms from the ivory tower without a real small-d democratic political strategy. Many of us are used to fighting the political battle against climate change by being Absolutely Correct and expecting that Science with her indefatigable armies of Reality will guard the flanks. A fully economic fight like this one just doesn't have the same kind of inevitability. Every step forward on the ground weakens the sense of urgency in the legislature, leading to an equilibrium trap without a vigorous political movement that can hold momentum.

Nerds do not usually want to do politics, but in housing you have to do politics.

I thought it was development companies that build houses? And why would development companies build so much housing that the value started to drop? Are you saying that "leftists" put up barriers to new housing such as regulation that helps drive up the overall cost of building and hence the price of housing? I would agree with you there. Are you sure "housing has been built in droves" is what brought the price of rent down?

House prices went sky high because of investors/speculators increasing demand (and massive immigration). Maybe if the government regulated more who buys housing (home dwellers not investors) rather than regulating what gets built. Also, have more sensible immigration levels.

Since developers will be less likely to build with falling prices perhaps the govt can build rent to own housing for lower income earners. Or incentivize private developers to build affordable housing.

High prices doesn't necessarily mean its purely a supply problem. If profit is high with low supply for developers what incentive would they have to increase supply?

Cue the downvotes.

It's true.

There's no one silver bullet, it will have to be a multi-front push:

1. Just build more

2. Zone for multi-family housing

3. Get rid of minimum parking and minimum lot size requirements

4. Allow mixed-user residential and commercial buildings

5. Shift property tax towards taxing the land and exempting buildings from tax, to force speculators to sell vacant land and derilect buildings for development

6. When things start moving, invest in walkability and public transit to support dense urban cores. Cars are great for low-density, but paying for miles of road and polluted air in dense city cores is silly behavior

San Francisco has more homes per capita (~2.0) than any of the southeast states (2.1-2.4).

Yes, hate to say it but there is only one way to lower housing prices.

Also I have limited sympathy for people who move to high COL areas and then are upset by housing prices.

>Why is uneven, concentrated development some kind of public good?

Because of agglomeration and the incredible desirability of mixed-use walkable neighborhoods (see rents in walkable neighborhoods of NYC + SF + Boston for proof). This farmland is only desirable and sought out by developers because of zoning restrictions elsewhere.

>How does this position unroll? How does the farm eventually get developed in 50 years? Do they have to buy TDR from someone else? Does an "equivalent" TDR have to be demolished?

These are all great questions which reveal that TDRs are not a very forward-looking policy solution to the housing crisis. Maybe planners believe there will be more appetite for taller buildings in the future, or that land prices will rise enough that the owners' support for zoning reform will overcome opposition. It does seem absurd, and more like a way to bribe property owners so that local politicians can avoid making public decisions in meetings that 90% of NIMBY cranks disagree with.

If you can get a payout for "selling" something without having to actually sell any part of your property that you intend on using, and nothing will change in your neighborhood, why wouldn't you sell it? And if property owners and residents in a neighborhood are crying to anyone who will listen that the world will end if four-story buildings give way to six-story buildings, you now have a big incentive to show up to those same land use meetings and push back.

That's the fun thing about common sense, everybody has a different definition of it.

The only way to know what your incentives will do is let them play out. Now, you can make educated guesses on what will happen, but much like computer security, people find surprising ways to break things.

It's funny that they call it "reverse game theory", like it's a new thing, when it's actually just regular game theory.

I was gonna say - as a Baltimorean MoCo is the last place I would hold up as some triumph of YIMBYism.

All they do is elect Republican governors who kill our transit projects.

They are definitely pandering to central planning supporters, and I don't think the author had to be prodded to support this position given her primary job chasing grants.