Name: How the US made affordable homes illegal（How the US made affordable homes illegal）
Uploaded: 2021-10-05T21:50:09.000Z
Duration: 9 min 42 s
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So I spend a lot of time looking at houses on Zillow.

情態副詞

And lately, I noticed that, even in places where houses are usually expensive...

程度副詞

Like here, in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

For years, the Bay Area has  been an extreme example

of how difficult it is to  find affordable housing in the US.

It's where Silicon Valley bus drivers sleep in their cars at night,

because they can't afford housing near work.

And where school teachers can't afford to live in the counties they teach. 

The lack of affordable housing is a national problem.

housing prices reach a level they've never  reached before in American history. 

They kind of just look like a rocket ship going to the moon:

housing prices reaching a median of $350,000 for the median American home.

Those prices have made rents more expensive,

and have made homeownership  less attainable for millions of Americans.

And how do we bring that rocket ship closer to Earth? 

We can think of today's housing prices in terms of a supply-and-demand problem. 

On the demand side,  there are a few things happening.

The first is a generational shift in who's buying homes. 

Millennials are the biggest generation in American history,

and they're aging into their  prime home-buying years.

On top of that, mortgage rates  are at an all-time low,

which means it's very cheap to borrow the money needed to buy a house.

That's enticed more people to buy if they can, making demand for houses even higher.

The problem is that supply  isn't matching that demand.

From 2010 to 2019, there were fewer homes built in the US than in any decade since the 1960s.

In particular, the construction of smaller, entry-level housing,

the kind made for first-time home buyers,  has dropped dramatically.

In the 1980s, those "starter" homes  made up around 40% of all homes built.

In 2018, one estimate said the US housing market was 2.5 million homes short of meeting demand.

And that's driving a big  part of the problem, both for renters

and for people who want to be homeowners.

The shortage is worst in the places where demand is highest,

And one pretty straightforward  solution to that

is to just build more homes in those places.

But for years, there's  been one big obstacle to that:

or local regulations that decide  what can be built where. 

This much of the region is zoned  for residential housing. 

In blue are areas zoned to  allow multi-family housing,

while the areas shaded in pink are zoned  for single-family housing only. 

That's 82 percent of all residential land in the Bay Area.

What it means is that you've banned the ability for anyone to build anything

other than a single unit of housing on that lot of land.

they've excluded all multi-family  housing from their neighborhoods.

And that doesn't just mean a  giant apartment building.

It means things like duplexes, things like fourplexes...

Things like that are illegal  in the majority of the country.

 This is an example of something  called "exclusionary zoning."

It's a big part of the reason for the housing supply shortage in the US.

And single-family-only zoning is just one way local laws limit how much housing we can build. 

Many places also employ height restrictions.

In Cupertino, California, some areas are zoned for multi-family buildings,

but they don't allow any  buildings over two stories.

Parking requirements are often written into zoning laws, too.

Cupertino requires developers to set aside space for two parking spaces

That means, if you were building an apartment complex that had 100 units,

you'd need to find space for 200 parking spots.

Which usually means buildings  that size don't get built at all. 

They lower the number of units  they're actually building

so they can save space  for those parking spaces.

And then, those units become more expensive

because the land still stays  the same cost to the developer.

And you then get a situation where potentially more affordable units

Another feature of many zoning laws  is minimum lot sizes.

It means builders are legally required to allot a minimum amount of land for each home.

In Cupertino, most single-family lots must be at least 5,000 square feet each. 

Starter homes are usually around  1,400 to 1,500 square feet.

And so you've basically banned  all that type of housing.

In Atherton, the minimum lot size for homes is one acre: more than 43,000 square feet.

Which makes it virtually impossible to build any kind of affordable home there.

Together, exclusionary zoning laws like this push builders across the country

instead of smaller starter homes,  or multi-family housing. 

Essentially creating gated communities in public spaces. 

What you are saying is that you  are only allowing people

who have already been able to partake in the wealth of this country,

and have access to high  opportunity jobs and education,

Historically, some of the first zoning laws in the US were engineered for that exactly:

to block people of color, and in particular Black Americans,

from living in predominantly  white neighborhoods. 

Today, the laws don't explicitly mention race, but they continue to worsen segregation. 

In the Bay Area, the more single-family zoning in a neighborhood, the whiter it is. 

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How the US made affordable homes illegal（How the US made affordable homes illegal）

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