In the 1910s, US cities began enacting policies that would shape neighborhoods and, unintentionally, lay the roots for the severe housing shortage today: single-family zoning laws.
This seems rather conspiratorial in my opinion, though it’s probably true in a few cases, I doubt it’s the majority. I think a lot of the pushback is from older people who are resistant to the idea for a variety of reasons, and they also happen to be more civically active in a number of places.
I see far more evidence do the latter than the former.
Ditto on pushback coming from private citizens rather than big corporations. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, NIMBYs in my neighborhood killing a proposed denser construction project. The “greedy” development firm wanted to build, the NIMBYs killed it. The article itself even mentions this, this is democracy doing its thing:
Homeowners wielded huge political influence to block any changes they believed could hurt their property values.
Blaming corporate greed is a stupid take. If only we relax NIMBY zoning laws, then the “corporate greed” of developers would automatically incentivize them to build all the dense housing we need (they are in fact very happy to build denser smaller lots if allowed to, contrary to what fire retardant claims), and finally start increasing the supply of housing in order to lower market price.
This seems rather conspiratorial in my opinion, though it’s probably true in a few cases, I doubt it’s the majority. I think a lot of the pushback is from older people who are resistant to the idea for a variety of reasons, and they also happen to be more civically active in a number of places.
I see far more evidence do the latter than the former.
Ditto on pushback coming from private citizens rather than big corporations. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, NIMBYs in my neighborhood killing a proposed denser construction project. The “greedy” development firm wanted to build, the NIMBYs killed it. The article itself even mentions this, this is democracy doing its thing:
Blaming corporate greed is a stupid take. If only we relax NIMBY zoning laws, then the “corporate greed” of developers would automatically incentivize them to build all the dense housing we need (they are in fact very happy to build denser smaller lots if allowed to, contrary to what fire retardant claims), and finally start increasing the supply of housing in order to lower market price.