America’s first founding father, James Otis Jr., was right when he said that “every man’s home is his castle,” and the United States is right to embody this in its strong protection of property rights. Yet housing is unaffordable, and few Americans can find their own castle to let their garden grow. About 70% of Americans must pay at least 30% of their incomes for housing. Our right to property means very little if we cannot exercise that right.
The answer to high housing costs is surprisingly simple: let people build more. Housing affordability is overwhelmingly a function of one thing—the extent to which governments place artificial restrictions on the supply of residential land.
New York City is the poster child of housing unaffordability. Driven by excess regulation the median home price is around $800,000, and average one-bedroom rents are soaring to $4,019 per month. The fundamental issue is a math problem: between 2010 and 2023, the city’s job market grew by 22%, yet its housing stock grew by only 4%.
The stock of housing is chained via a labyrinth of 126 maps and thousands of pages of text in zoning laws, which makes it hard for developers to navigate. Permitting processes, environmental reviews, and pre-certifications can delay projects for years, adding an estimated $50,000 to the cost of every single unit.
Baking the southern sunshine stands the antithesis of the Big Apple: Austin, Texas, whose prices have fallen by a quarter of what they were in June 2022, below pre-pandemic levels.
Austin made it easy to build houses through its Home Options for Mobility and Equity (HOME) Initiative. Austin reduced minimum lot sizes by 68%, from 5,750 to 1,800 square feet. It eliminated parking minimums and allowed up to three units on lots that were formerly restricted to single-family homes. By early 2024, builders were filing dozens of applications for projects that were previously illegal, with the majority located in historically lower-income neighborhoods.
Housing markets follow the basic laws of economics: when demand exceeds supply, prices rise. When supply is allowed to respond to demand, prices stabilize.
Houston serves as the clearest example of this principle. With no traditional zoning code, Houston issues approximately 64,000 housing permits annually for a population of 6.2 million. In contrast, the entire state of California, with 39 million people, issues roughly 83,000. Because Houston allows supply to meet demand, its median home price remains between $300,000 and $350,000, remaining accessible to middle-income families.
California, conversely, proves that restricting supply inflates costs. Construction costs in the Bay Area are triple those in Texas due to zoning, fees, and delays. In regulated California neighborhoods, the land itself comprises 75% of a home’s value, a direct result of artificial scarcity.
Recent history shows that when barriers are removed, the market responds. Minneapolis eliminated single-family zoning in 2018, allowing duplexes and triplexes citywide. From 2017 to 2022, the city expanded its housing stock by 12%. Consequently, rent growth stayed near zero even as the population grew.
Similarly, Los Angeles utilized an executive order to streamline the approval process for affordable housing. In a single year, the planning department received applications for 16,150 units, more than the previous three years combined. These were 100% privately invested projects requiring no public subsidies; the only incentive needed was the removal of regulatory burdens.
State-level reforms are also gaining traction. Oregon, Maine, and Washington have all moved to ban exclusive single-family zoning. In Texas, new senate bills allow multifamily housing on commercial land and small apartment buildings statewide, maintaining local control while removing bureaucratic hurdles.
Policymakers often attempt to fix housing costs with mandates like rent control or inclusionary zoning, but these well-intentioned policies backfire. Rent control does not create new apartments; it signals to developers that building is unprofitable, leading to housing shortages and reduced maintenance.
Inclusionary zoning, which requires developers to sell a portion of units below market rate, acts as a tax on construction. Research on Los Angeles found that raising inclusionary requirements from 0% to 20% would cut housing production nearly in half.
Deregulation works because it aligns with market forces rather than fighting them. When Austin reduced lot sizes, it didn’t mandate smaller homes; it simply removed the regulations preventing them. This respects the reality that central planners cannot know what housing is needed better than market participants.
The most common argument against development is that it causes displacement and gentrification. However, this view misdiagnoses the problem. Displacement is driven by scarcity, not abundance. When housing is scarce, wealthy residents bid up the price of existing older stock, pushing out low-income residents.
Cities with the strictest zoning, such as New York, Boston, and San Francisco, suffer from the most severe displacement. Conversely, Houston has minimal zoning and substantially lower displacement pressure. When cities allow abundant construction, luxury units absorb the demand of high earners, protecting older, affordable housing stock from upward price pressure. In fact, a study conducted in New York City found that where housing was built at the fastest pace (15% or more increase in housing), it was the only place where minority residents could stay in their units.
Government policies create artificial scarcity, as strict zoning often correlates with lower density, higher prices, and segregation. The solution, therefore, requires systematically removing these barriers.
Cities should eliminate single-family zoning, slash minimum lot sizes, remove parking mandates, and move from discretionary reviews to by-right approvals. Lengthy environmental studies and design reviews often serve no purpose other than adding months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to project costs. As the data demonstrates, if we let people build, the crisis will recede.
We are like Moses, trapped in our own Egypt of unaffordable housing. Our Pharaoh is the government’s overbarring rules. As it was then, the solution is freedom. Let my people build! and we shall let the crisis subside.
