The fastest and cheapest way to make housing affordable: deregulate

Housing prices in Silicon Valley are sky-high because government regulations have made it virtually impossible to build new housing that people can afford. Kevin Erdman at National Review explores what could happen if those regulations went away.

Most families in American probably want to live in a single family home, but our planning regulations don't allow a free choice of other options. Most U.S. cities, with the particle exceptional of Houston, tightly cap the amount of land where multifamily housing is legal. Tall buildings, mixed-use developments, semi-attached duplexes, and "missing middle" (intermediate size) apartment buildings are widely prohibited, even if they are what the market demands. Nobody should be ordered by the government to live in an apartment building, or even a duplex--but it also shouldn't be illegal for those who want to. With these restrictions relaxed, we might even be surprised at how many families prefer urban life, as part of an urban capitalism, when apartments are Texas-style affordable.

This is a vision for how capltalism can fend off stagnation, respecting the climate concerns of today's youth while avoiding a socialist future that would endanger America's propserity.

Read the whole thing here.

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