Interesting.
Ive started to think where I live in the UK (where most peoples wealth is in their house) the amount of houses constructed is carefully managed to ensure prices don't go down. Any "housing crisis" could easily be fixed (build more houses), but the supply/demand economic incentives are out of whack. It's a covert lever of the economy.
on a local level, in the NW US, ive been looking at the county code policies for about 4 years.
the conclusion ive come to is that the codes are rooted in 3 goals…
1. maximize local government income.
2. force money flow to cooperative partner corporations
3. aggressively outlaw anything which is perceived to threaten 1 and 2.
the people, sustainability, innovation, and affordable housing do not enter into the picture unless they are gigantic tax funded projects which feed the existing bureaucracy, and rarely have any practical effect.
the simple act of not outlawing tinyhomes, converted RVs,
yurts, and other alternative structures would have a very real and immediate effect. Particularly since hundreds of people live in RVs on their property already within a 10 mile radius of me.
The reason they fight this is because it would lower county bureaucracy income.
considering that their primary way of enforcing this is the threat of armed violence, ive come to view them as State sponsored extortionists.
We have the same issue in Canada. Everyone's savings are in their houses, and our government's GDP relies on the real estate market. Therefore, the bubble must keep inflating.
