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DJBabyB0kCh0y t1_j209dv6 wrote

Reply to comment by cramersCoke in Opinion: New York finally has momentum on housing and it’s time for a breakthrough by King-of-New-York

It's yet another failure of capitalism. There aren't a lot of incentives out there to entice a developer to put up a highrise full of actually affordable units. Instead we have miles of skyscrapers going up around the city that remain half empty.

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jumbod666 t1_j210ru6 wrote

Every housing regulation drives up costs for building and maintaining. State and local governments have to look at regulations and see which can be removed.

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DJBabyB0kCh0y t1_j211h3t wrote

I'm all for removing regulations that provide no utility besides a straight cash grab.

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kiklion t1_j23ke27 wrote

But all regulations provide utility in some way.

It’s trivial to contrive a valid reason for some regulation. It has to be a cost-benefit analysis of if the regulation is worth the negative impact on housing.

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12stTales t1_j21rebd wrote

A highrise of affordable units is literally illegal to build in almost all of NY state so I dont think "capitalism" is to blame.

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SirMonkey687 t1_j23c4fh wrote 

   Genuinely curious - what are you specifically referring to here?
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12stTales t1_j23txmi wrote

Zoning in suburbs and towns often restricts building size to single family detached houses. Even in NYC there are some areas like this. Whats left has other zoning restrictions that limit size, bulk, etc and deter housing production

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--A3-- t1_j2c2gpt wrote

But why are these restrictions so widespread and fought for so strongly? It's because people who already own houses have a financial incentive to restrict the creation of new houses. If the supply of housing stays the same but demand increases, the value of what they own skyrockets.

The monetary incentive which leads to NIMBY zoning policies arises from the fact that housing is a commodity.

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