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We must fight to desegregate our cities. The middle class is suffering not because they can't afford to outbid the rich, but because it's illegal to outbid the rich.

No: The middle class is suffering because it's illegal to building housing for them. See http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu... or The Rent Is Too Damn High http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp....

If you restrict the supply of a good in the face of increasing demand, prices rise. The rest is commentary.

We're saying the same thing. I've found that it's harder to convince people when I talk about buildings and economics, so I talk about the families our laws prevent from living in our neighborhoods.

Great write up on the subject Jake. Sadly, I think your hypothesis that emotional arguments will always drown out rational ones is correct.

Too many of the self-described progressives in places like Seattle and San Francisco are too entrenched to admit that market forces (or more accurately, the resistance of them) is the real problem.

You're violently agreeing. The point is, you take a large lot, you could build a condo building on it with five units, or you could build a large SFU. The OP's argument is five middle class people could outbid the rich guy. Except that the condo is illegal, the area is zoned for single family.

Another issue here is the wealth disparity. I think your typical millionaire could easily outbid five middle class families or even ten middle class families.

> Another issue here is the wealth disparity. I think your typical millionaire could easily outbid five middle class families or even ten middle class families.

They often could, but would they choose to? Less trivially.

Assuming they did not have to abide by height restrictions, why wouldn't they?

Much of Silicon Valley is actually zoned multi-family. The big problem here is height restrictions, not single vs. multi-family.

Austinite too. It's a mess that's growing out of control, but thankfully I find the suburbs more attractive as I age.

Huge issue is that the real estate market is growing faster than wages are. So you need to be able to throw down serious cash if you want in. I'm of the conclusion that you either better hustle hard and make a ton of money or move further out and schedule your commute accordingly. It's not going to change nor will the counsel fix it.

I personally think that Central areas have reached bubble status. Total dumpster fires going for nearly a million? Might as well move to the ocean for that much!

Anyway, I honestly don't think it's worth fighting. If you want in, the better solution is figuring out how you're going to get 200k cash in your bank account without devastating your life, and fast. Otherwise rent all your life, or see ya in Leander. Pick one.

I can afford to buy in central Austin. We should fight for those who can't. This is a battle that can be won, and if you're interested in helping, join Friends of Austin Neighborhoods, a group of individuals and neighborhood associations who love their neighborhoods and want to share them with others.

http://www.atxfriends.org/

While I mostly agree with the context of what you are saying... Austin was segregated long before we had zoning or high paying tech jobs.

As for the shrinking population of black people I believe this is more due to culture than anything. Austin never has had a very large black population and as I said always been quite segregated. The culture in Austin is and has always been very white compared to cities that were much larger like Dallas and Houston. My friends that have moved away due to this have told me they just don't feel like there are enough places for them to go to on Friday/Saturday night. For us white folks there is an insane amount of things to do culture wise, especially if you are into music.

Also Austin never had jobs compared to other large metros in Texas until the tech jobs came. You either worked at the State, UT or pretty much waited tables.

One other thing. The bay area interestingly has hills much like Austin. This surely has to do with high cost of housing in specific areas. The closer you get to the hills the more it cost to live. Now with the number of people moving here the center of town gets more unaffordable. If the amount of people moving here continues I don't think multi use housing can fix this fast enough.

I wonder if anyone could have standing to sue a municipality to change the zoning laws on these grounds, under the civil rights act.

This has been done before with cities who were more egregiously discriminatory with their zoning, as I mention in the long form of this argument[1]. I don't know what hurdles are in the way of using the courts to end this subtle segregation, but we should definitely find out and make it happen.

Economic segregation is the whole point of density-based zoning. It is widely supported by property owners. If we can't convince them that they are beneficiaries of unjust laws, then the courts are our best option.

[1] https://medium.com/@niranbabalola/we-must-repeal-our-segrega...

I think we are already convincing people with the cultural benefits. Who doesn't want to live in a neighborhood where the people who defined that neighborhood are still around as your neighbors, to be together in public places and share in the uniqueness of your home together. I believe the homeowners of this generation do want this.

Yuma Az was just successfully sued for zoning laws under the fair housing act. http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/04/court-decision-on-dis...

Another group is trying to sue Lafayette, Ca http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/09/suing-the-suburbs-ove...

Edit: fixed first link

http://tinyvillages.org

That's because Houston has no zoning.

Zoning by use (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.) is just one of many land use tools. There are tons of rules in Houston about how much land you need for a building and what you can actually build, as well as restrictive covenants in individual deeds that limit what can be built.

We don't need to eliminate zoning, but density-based zoning is guaranteed to cause economic segregation. That's what it's for. We should eliminate it in our central cities and employment centers.

>"Single family zoning laws have always been intended to segregate people by income"

That is completely unfounded.

I haven't found a citation on this, but I'm pretty confident that the folks who gave us explicit racial segregation said some pretty terrible things about poor people that I'll be able to cite. Unfortunately, the time I can spend on this is limited.

Whether or not it was the intention, that's been the effect. In a small town I grew up in, a commuter train line was installed and the place started to grow. They implemented minimum two acre lot sizes for all new construction; not many can afford such a huge lot, nevermind building the house afterwards.