Yes In My Back Yard: Fighting Back Against Housing Inflation
The anti-NIMBY movement unites political factions in the name of bringing down housing costs.
FOR DECADES, many homeowners and their associations have fought for heavy-handed zoning regulations intended to protect housing investments and inflate their value by keeping supply at bay.
Using restrictive land-use regulations, such as zoning rules, minimum lot sizes, height restrictions, parking minimums, and set-back rules (minimum distance from the curb), among others, homeowners in in-demand areas have enjoyed increasingly higher home values. These have resulted in shutting out many new buyers, and increased rents for those who do not own.
This falls into the basic economics of supply and demand:
- Housing is a basic need.
- As long as the population or demand to live in a certain area grows, there will always be a high demand for housing.
- If supply does not keep up with demand, the existing supply will become more valuable.
In a free market, supply should increase relative to demand. Therefore if there is more demand for housing, the supply will continue to increase, and prices will stabilize.
