Density and Housing

I ran across an interesting New York Times article last week about housing and affordability in California. I doubt many people would disagree that California has a couple of interesting problems with their cost of living, but that's not going to stop us from disagreeing about what's causing the problem, and this particular article highlights what I believe is the primary cause.

Specifically, it talks about the various ways in which zoning and usage restrictions are driving costs up and pushing people out. The proponents of such rules probably aren't trying to make a point of the latter, nor do I think the environmental concerns that are routinely mocked by the right wing are necessarily the point (or the major cause of these problems) either. Frankly, I think it's just NIMBYism - many people just don't want to live in high-density areas, and so will take steps to prevent their areas from becoming high-density. I don't understand it myself, since I've always liked living in higher density areas (better mass transit, more services close by

If it were just a matter of people choosing to live in areas they preferred (and moving if the area no longer suited them), I would have much less of a problem with that. Unfortunately, as the NYT article points out, what's actually happening looks a lot more like people blocking everyone else from living in a particular area unless their preferences exactly match the existing groups'. There's a line there between properly advocating for oneself and unjustly interfering with others, and a lot of the strongest opposition is on the wrong side of it.

This article also led me to some interesting questions about how zoning is different in various areas, and why some of the places I've lived in other countries don't seem to have this problem. Luckily, I was able to find some interesting (albeit perhaps overly detailed) articles about zoning in North America versus Japan. It's a fascinating look into how government decisions that most of us neither know nor care about have massive effects on multiple parts of our society and economy. I still need to find someone who actually likes North America's zoning and have a chance to see a defense of the idea before I can say I'm completely convinced, but articles like these still reinforce my belief that there's some things about our society that we need to fix.