[adameasterling]

This is a fantastic article.

Burdensome regulations on housing construction have caused costs to skyrocket. Minimum lot sizes, setback requirements, square footage minimums, floor-area ratio restrictions, overzealous height restrictions, parking requirements, abuse of environmental reviews, historic designations, community reviews, overzealous MFH requirements (like double-stair), below-market mandates, all have worked together to constrain supply, leading to skyrocketing costs.

It's the single most important economic issue for me. We need a nationwide effort to ease these restrictions, or we're just going to continue to see rents eat up more and more of young people's earnings.

[gamepsys]

Just curious, are there any regulations on housing you agree with? There tends to be belief that housing regulations exist to limit supply. Let's not forget that many of these encourage safety and are cost effective ways to increase the quality of life of the residents. If we take deregulation and cheap housing to the extreme we end up with shanty towns.

[mperham]

None of the things he mentioned have anything to do with safety.

[eru]

You already have shanty towns with all the regulation.

Making housing cheaper also means making higher quality housing cheaper.

[anon291]

> If we take deregulation and cheap housing to the extreme we end up with shanty towns.

That's possible, but, considering that all the most expensive places in this country were developed in the very way this article is advocating, I'm going to label it as improbable.

Many amongst my friends and family think I'm a bit crazy living in the inner city, but the truth is my equity has skyrocketed, and will continue to do so. Urban dwellings are in high demand. Given that many of these same urban dwellings are illegal to construct now / prohibitively expensive, we've handicapped the ability of the market to meet demand.

[mcculley]

> There tends to be belief that housing regulations exist to limit supply.

It is often more the case that limited supply is an unintended outcome. People just don’t think ahead.

[hackerlight]

Physical safety (structural integrity and fire safety), noise transmission and ventilation. I think regulations around these 3 aspects can help more than they hurt. Beyond these items, I would be skeptical.

[xnx]

> There tends to be belief that housing regulations exist to limit supply.

Also to enrich union tradespeople. See prohibitions against PEX plumbing and requirements for electrical conduit instead of Romex.

[twiddling]

Don't forget about street widths being determined by the ability to turn around fire equipment.

[bombcar]

If it makes you feel any better the oldest streets around here are wider than newer ones, because they had to be able to turn a wagon with a team of horses.

[elliotto]

Having streets unable to be accessible by fire response vehicles doesn't seem like a good idea. What would be the alternative here? (genuine question, I'm not from the US)

[actionfromafar]

Hm.. couldn't a fire engine be driven in reverse? It could have an emergency driver's wheel in the back. I have seen crane trucks driven with a joystick from outside the vehicle, so it doesn't seem impossible.

[keenmaster]

We can make them turn 360 degrees like the electric G-Wagon. If upgrading the fleet of firefighting trucks to do so costs less than the value brought by tighter spacing of homes, it’s worth it.

[m463]

looks like building heights haven't been held back...

[willis936]

A lot of these zoning changes lower the already low barrier for multinationals to build, but does nothing for actual families. I'm presently surrounded by hundreds of empty units priced out of reach because these companies are illegally colluding to fix the price. They may claim ignorance and try to launder responsibility through a series of tech products, but at the end of the day the rent is high where I am because of price fixing.

[robertlagrant]

Sorry I don't understand - why would they be selling units, but also deliberately pricing them too high?

[hammock]

How is double stair MFH overzealous? I can’t control if my neighbor blocks the stairwell with a couch that gets stuck while he’s moving in and now I have no egress if my other neighbor starts a fire.

I’m in favor of greater freedoms, and the freedom to choose a single stair MFH if I want.

But I don’t want.

[kspacewalk2]

A couch and a fire and that couch can't be pushed over or jumped over... That's quite a contrived scenario. I suspect that most of the improvements in the fire safety record of apartment buildings have to do with other factors like materials used, fireproof stair doors, etc etc. The reason I think the two stairs don't do much is that first world countries exist outside North America, they don't have this rule, and their fire safety is just as good or better than ours.

Same reason I'm extremely skeptical that our fire trucks need to be so grotesquely large, despite what the fire departments claim. If there were no countries with a good fire safety record outside North America, like sure, okay, maybe. But they're just as good or better at fighting fires in Europe, and manage to go this with human sized trucks that don't require extremely wide streets, wide turn radiuses, and aren't nearly as deadly for pedestrians as a result. Thanks for existing, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan etc! One day we'll accept that you to cities, building and engineering better and just copy you.

[kdmccormick]

> I can’t control if my neighbor blocks the stairwell with a couch that gets stuck while he’s moving in and now I have no egress if my other neighbor starts a fire.

That is an extremely specific situation!

> How is double stair MFH overzealous?

There is a cost to every regulation. The cost to this one is that housing is more expensive for all Americans. Stress, poverty, and homelessness all lead to negative health outcomes. Taken as a whole, those negative outcomes may very well outweigh the fire safety benefits of double-stair (which have never been proven to exist).

> I’m in favor of greater freedoms, and the freedom to choose a single stair MFH if I want. > But I don’t want.

Right, so it sounds like you are in favor of removing the double-stair regulation?

[TaylorAlexander]

> How is double stair MFH overzealous?

I suggest reading the article, which is intended to answer this question in depth. It provides concrete examples!

[Klaster_1]

Check out this video, which argues against double stair MFH - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM.

[Paradigma11]

That doesnt help you because another neighbor is moving out and blocking the second staircase with another couch. This is the reason why you should have three staircases and only two neighbors. Though a problem arises if a neighbor is able to block a staircase and start a fire at the same time. That has to be checked beforehand.

[cheriot]

We should require two stairs for single family housing as well.

The elderly and disabled will also need to get furniture up stairs. Not to mention that the housing shortage forces more people to share a house with strangers.

[amarshall]

The couch goes in the elevator, not the stairwell.

[wolverine876]

> Burdensome regulations on housing construction have caused costs to skyrocket.

How much have costs increased, and what tells us that it's regulations, not many other causes?

Also, which regulations? Some are more valuable, some less, and inevitably some will misfire. I'm not just going to trust real estate developers, who have their own interests, to meet other needs.

> below-market mandates

I'm not sure we need more high-end development - those tenants have plenty of options.

> community reviews

In cities, new buildings can impact a community for a century. They should have a say, not just a developer from another city.

[cheriot]

> Also, which regulations?

The entire article is on the prohibition of single stair multi-family residential.

> I'm not sure we need more high-end development - those tenants have plenty of options.

This is silly. When car makers couldn't make enough cars in 2021 and the price went up, was the solution to ban making new cars? Should we have prohibited making cars with fancy trim? Having enough housing for everyone is the only way to make sure affordable housing exists.

[adameasterling]

Err, I just enumerated many regulations I have a problem with in the very post you quoted, and evidence is pretty strong that it's the combined effect of all of those regulations that results in higher costs. [1] I realized I left off overuse of exclusively single-family zoning, which is the worst offender. [2]

> I'm not sure we need more high-end development - those tenants have plenty of options.

Evidence is strong that market-rate construction causes richer residents to exchange their current unit for a higher-end unit, opening up supply at the lower end. [3]

The problem with BMR requirements is the increased costs borne by developers, who have to offset those increased costs by charging more for the market rate units. There's a limit to that market, so fewer units are constructed than otherwise would be. Middle class families are especially worse off, as they neither qualify for BMR lotteries, nor earn enough for the rapidly accelerating market-rate unit. [4]

Further, rents are lower in states that disallow BMR mandates (like Texas) than those that have BMR mandates (like California).

1. https://www.axios.com/2019/08/28/study-californias-land-use-... 2. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/05/business/single-family-zoning... 3. https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-... 4. https://escholarship.org/content/qt036599mr/qt036599mr_noSpl...

[jojobas]

Yet people keep flocking to them dreadful single-family-home-majority cities, happy to pay rent and all.

[ksplicer]

I don't know anyone starting a family happy with the situation. Most people I know are moving to suburbs only because they can't get 3 bedroom apartments in cities. If MFH's became broadly available I think many new families would flock there.