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Comment by TacticalTable | Hacker News Reader

These kinds of zoning restrictions cause so many more problems than they resolve. If somebody wants to live in a small home, the law shouldn't get in their way. They make sense for tenant rights, or home selling, but why impede someone's personal freedoms?

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I don't even see them making sense for tenant rights or home selling. Placing a minimum on the size of apartment someone's allowed to rent to me, or the size of home I can buy ultimately comes into conflict with my right to decide how much money I'm willing to spend.

Other housing codes - say, requiring the wiring not to be a fire hazard - make a lot of sense as a way to protect me in situations where I can't reasonably be expected to have the expertise necessary to assess the situation for myself. But I am the ultimate authority when it comes to deciding how much space I need for myself and all my crap.

I tend to agree with this sentiment but it does sound a lot like the whole “if people want to sign up to be slaves to Uber because they have no other options then that is their right” argument which I have mixed feelings about. I could imagine a situation where new construction in SF is all 100sft units because it maximizes rent ROI which would if anything make larger spaces even more expensive then they are.

Wouldn't that still be better than the current situation? It seems like a lot of these laws, in an attempt to define the acceptable minimum as middle class, just end up pricing lower income people out of the market altogether. I think it should be alright to allow for lower minimums as long as the main priority of fluid class mobility remains high.

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