The Expert Podcast

…How did we get to such a bad place with housing prices? Whether it's single family homes apartments. condominiums any measure of home prices is that it's much higher than it was And to put it puts it out of reach For many average middle-class people working class people can't afford the average house even some apartments. Are out of reach for a lot of people How did we get here Well, this is a great article from Cambridge day which describes this longterm train wreck. They put us here they call it a hundred year class war a hundred year class war That's a big deal.

And what happened was over the last 100 years. There have been…a tapestry a combination. Of political social and legal efforts that have created. A mechanism for residents. That put us in this place where the price of homes He…is not in line with the average income for…a typical.

Person. And what happened was single family home construction was incentivized. Right It was incentivized by the tax code. Deductible interest It was incentivized by. A building.

codes in, in zoning where you had…single family only areas. More importantly it was also incentivized by the permitting process where many jurisdictions have in in addition to single family homes also have what's called setbacks on the property where you have to have your house, a certain number of feet from the road maybe 20 feet, maybe 10 feet from the sideline maybe 15 feet from the back. Property boundary. And that may seem like a small thing but what that does. Is it doesn't allow density of houses and some people wants to have more room They want to buy a house with.

You know two acres and a lot of romale yard That's fine. But even if you don't care to have that much space even if you want to have, you know basically one house right next to your neighbor. It may not be possible to build that type of housing. Some parts of Florida have what's called zero lot lines where there is no. There is no setback on both sides One side has five foot.

So you have a staggered setback. And that puts houses closest together. But density may also not be the…

solution either. Regardless this 100 a year combination of rules has put us in this place Now it wasn't. A organized conspire. It wasn't a bunch of people that said look let's make housing prices get as high as they can be. It was just people who want to live in certain areas one wanting to defend their comfort of life.

And maybe not necessarily out to get somebody else, but they wanted to have a comfortable life If you want to have a suburban neighborhood with big yards to raise your kids and let your dog run around that's what you created and you're not going to vote. For changes to zoning that you have a 50 unit apartment right next to your house right Because that's that's not what you want You want a different character, if that's right or wrong that's a whole different con conversation. But that's what people do. They want to…encourage things that. Benefits to them.

They don't necessarily…

Think of and go out of their way to make things hard for somebody else. But all of these. different things put together the tax codes, the zoning the setbacks. And the permit fees. Have put us in this position where we are today How do you undo it Well if it took a hundred years to get here, it's not going to.

Go away overnight It may take a long time to undo that. And it may not be something that you undo, you may evolve forward And that's what a lot of planning projects miss out on They say well let's undo this Let's erase this well that may create more problems than you have right now. Instead of undoing it. A better way to do it is to evolve, create something new. Maybe not to erase or destroy what's already there but maybe build something new in a different place.

Look, think of any big city…

San Francisco Dallas. New York Miami. Portland. Any of these big cities. What makes.

that location of that city…

Defined. Does the city have to be there Why not build a big city out of nothing? In a place that there was open space it put whatever density you want. They did it in Dubai. They built one of the highest density cities in the middle of a desert.

So people say well I'm going to live near Portland Well why do you want to live near Portland? Portland's already established. It may not have everything you want If you want those things build something with density, maybe. Where there's open land, right And build a better if you want things with density with certain character a certain type of social. Attributes.

Build this somewhere else. And you might be able to do it easier than trying to reconstruct something that's already there because you're going to have a lot of pushback and you might not even have what you want part of the reason that some of the things people want in a certain city. Exists is because of the fact that. There has been pushback, right? Maybe some of the character of neighborhoods maybe some of the restaurants some of the,

architecture and parks are there because at one point there was pushback against zoning and density. So if you're going to start over, start over in a way that's a carefully constructed urban environment. Now. We're going to do another video a little bit later about where density might not be. all it's cracked up to be think about highways.

You know people go out of their way to say well there's traffic So build bigger highways. There's a lot of traffic backup. So instead of having four lanes have 10 lanes there's some places where there's 10 lane highways. Well what happens when you build 10 lanes of traffic gets worse because more people go on the highway. Well, if you build cities with more density is more people can live there.

The answer to the highways is get less people to drive cars. Well, if you build more dense housing in a neighborhood…

And more people move there What's going to be your answer. Move people out. Right. You're you're going to end up with some of the same problems So…this situation with housing has happened over a hundred years. It's not going to go away overnight.

This Cambridge they article it has a really good description of all the chain of events that happened to get us there. And what the financial…incentives for builders, governments residents investors. To put us in a place where we have this conflict between…the price of a house and the cost and the income and financial. wherewithal of the people who want to live there.