Birdnow's Aviary

October 03, 2026

The Karens of Housing

Timothy Birdnow

Yep.

The Big Bad Guy Behind Unaffordable Housing Almost No One Names: Zoning Laws

Between zoning laws, environmental laws, labor unions, and a host of other, easily avoidable things, housing prices have gone up through the roof. Every extra layer adds to the cost.

And millions of illegal aliens who need to be housed do likewise.

From the article:

After tentative steps by local governments early in the century, the Court’s decision in Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. unleashed state and local governments to manage people’s use of their own property for whatever states considered to be the public good. Zoning subsequently expanded into an enormous thicket of laws and regulations specifying what people can and cannot build on their property.

The consequences have been momentous. Zoning has raised the cost of housing significantly, especially by discouraging the construction of starter homes, leading to a housing supply gap of more than 4 million homes in 2025, according to Realtor.com.

Zoning and other regulatory requirements are the major limitation on housing construction, a new paper from the American Enterprise Institute concluded. "In many markets policy-induced costs and local feasibility barriers act as the primary constraint on new housing production and are more binding than capital availability alone,” the paper said.

A study by the Cato Institute found that "rising land-use regulation is associated with rising real average home prices in 44 states and that rising zoning regulation is associated with rising real average home prices in 36 states. In general, the states that have increased the amount of rules and restrictions on land use the most have higher housing prices.”

Land-use regulations directed toward "focusing density and redevelopment” in urban areas, to prevent expansion of cities into surrounding regions — also known as "urban sprawl” — represent perhaps the most ambitious form of zoning.

The regulations drive up housing prices far beyond their costs in less-regulated places, greatly suppress economic development, and increase urban poverty, noted demographer Wendell Cox.

I worked in real estate for twenty years and can testify to this. EVERYTHING is regulated, or forbidden. You can't make a move without government breathing down your necks. And you have to pay every step of the way. That cost is passed along - part of doing business.

There are special building courts whose sole reason for existing is to adjudicate code violations. I know; I've sat in them enough over the years. (Usually they are not unpleasant; the judge is usually polite to us because it's just business after all. And even when the judge was angry at an owner he usually didn't take it out on the realtors, although one time the judge locked up one of my co-workers in a fit of pique because the owner didn't do what he was ordered to do. My boss had to come with two hundred dollars to bail him out!)

The problem is private property was never enumerated in the Constitution because the framers thought that unnecessary; it is the cornerstone of all our other rights. And the Constitution specifically states in the Ninth Amendment that the enumerated rights were not the only rights reserved to the People; any power not EXPRESSLY granted by the Constitution was reserved to the People.

I wrote this back in 2005 explaining the sacred nature of property.

But the Progressive era saw the rise in the nanny state and courts simply usurped powers for government that were never intended to belong to them.

A while back a man who had bought a very old house in Florissant's Old Town District went to jail Florissant is a suburb of St. Louis, and for a while was the fourth largest city in the state. This man bought the house and wanted to paint it a tasteful color, which he did. The city came down on him like a ton of bricks, ordering him to repaint the house because the color he chose violated the building code for the district. (He painted it a pastel blue, if I remember, which was apparently a mortal sin.) They actually put this guy in jail for refusing to comply with the order. Then these communities wonder why people leave and they eventually have a bunch of abandoned buildings.

We don't have a housing crisis; we have a government overreach crisis. There are all sorts of abandoned buildings around (especially in St. Louis) that could be rehabbed if there wasn't so much strangulating red tape.

But we are told there is a housing crisis. I seem to remember Barney Frank (Democrat) pushing legislation for "affordable housing" (say it with spittle shooting from your mouth as did the Hon. Frank) and yet here we are, decades after he and his buddies "fixed" the problem, struggling with the same issue.

That's because governments don't fix problems, people do. Government needs to get out of the way and let the People fix the problem themselves.

I get basic safety standards; that is reasonable. But so much of what you have with so many of the building codes (and worse, overzealous inspectors) is simply ridiculous. It's happened on many occasions where the inspectors did not apply the code but actually a higher standard, one they thought better despite what the law said. And the inspector is a god inside a building; his will be done! It is very, very hard to get one overruled and it will cost you.

So affordable housing is a victim of nanny regulations and Karen approval.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 921 words, total size 7 kb.

Hide Comments | Add Comment