NIMBYism Stifles Housing Construction in Previous Growth Areas
In a recent article in the Atlantic, Rogé Karma, describes how NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) forces have been increasingly stifling housing construction many areas – including Sun Belt cities – where it was previously relatively easy:
Something is happening in the housing market that really shouldn’t be. Everyone familiar with America’s affordability crisis knows that it is most acute in ultra-progressive coastal cities in heavily Democratic states. And yet, home prices have been rising most sharply in the exact places that have long served as a refuge for Americans fed up with the spiraling cost of living. Over the past decade, the median home price has increased by 134 percent in Phoenix, 133 percent in Miami, 129 percent in Atlanta, and 99 percent in Dallas. (Over that same stretch, prices in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have increased by about 75 percent, 76 percent, and 97 percent, respectively).
This trend could prove disastrous. For much of the past half century, suburban sprawl across the Sun Belt was a kind of pressure-release valve for the housing market. People who couldn’t afford to live in expensive cities had other, cheaper places to go. Now even the affordable alternatives are on track to become out of reach for a critical mass of Americans.
The trend also presents a mystery. According to expert consensus, anti-growth liberals have imposed excessive regulations that made building enough homes impossible. The housing crisis has thus become synonymous with feckless blue-state governance. So how can prices now be rising so fast in red and purple states known for their loose regulations?
As Karma describes later in the article, the main cause of the problem is the growth of exclusionary zoning and other regulatory restrictions on construction in areas where the were previously relatively lax. He relies in part on an important new new National Bureau of Economic Research study by leading housing economists Edward G
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