I always thought it was explained by local government elections generally having a low voter turnout, and homeowners having the strongest incentive to vote. But I’m not really sure that’s it, if you look at places like LA, local elections generally have very poor turnout, but in SF its actually not that bad.
The cynic in me thinks it’s just run of the mill political corruption. The cities where these problems are the worst have essentially been run by the same group of politicians for quite a long time, and they’re generally elected on platforms of caring about societies less advantaged groups. But time after time they get elected and incrementally make things a bit worse before being elected again. Which could suggest that you win in politics by simply saying the right things rather than actually doing them. But I don’t find that sort of “people are just dumb” line of reasoning very compelling.
In any case, the problem has gotten so bad in many places that’s it’s not possible to fix over any reasonable period of time. If you too imagine the most extreme approach of simply abolishing all zoning and planning regulations over night, housing prices and rent would certainly sharply decline. But then you would have a new problem of millions of mortgages being underwater.
The cynic in me thinks it’s just run of the mill political corruption. The cities where these problems are the worst have essentially been run by the same group of politicians for quite a long time, and they’re generally elected on platforms of caring about societies less advantaged groups. But time after time they get elected and incrementally make things a bit worse before being elected again. Which could suggest that you win in politics by simply saying the right things rather than actually doing them. But I don’t find that sort of “people are just dumb” line of reasoning very compelling.
In any case, the problem has gotten so bad in many places that’s it’s not possible to fix over any reasonable period of time. If you too imagine the most extreme approach of simply abolishing all zoning and planning regulations over night, housing prices and rent would certainly sharply decline. But then you would have a new problem of millions of mortgages being underwater.