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Comment by notch656a | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of the supply at the low end is irreplaceable, because building codes and regulations have changed significantly over the years. It's effectively illegal to build some of the more affordable buildings in certain jurisdictions.

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This is true. I'd estimate at least 70% of all rental unit currently under construction will not be "affordable" for two people working full time for minimum wage. In northern New England it's easily 100% of units.

That said all rental projects that I know of in Maine and New Hampshire are all rented before they even finish construction.

EDIT: I'd also like to make a point about current regulation and zoning. It's not unusual for a developer to pay around $500,000 or more in state fees, environmental review, and layer time to get a new apartment complex approved. This requires insider connections and specialized knowledge of the municipality if you want it completed in a reasonable time frame. Partially this is because national building codes are more complicated then ever but more often building anything at all requires a zoning exception or amendment.

If you pull of the zoning maps for your town or city you'll likely find it riddled with parcels that have been cut out or otherwise exempted from the rest of the zone. This process can be expensive and take years to complete.

"not unusual for a developer to pay around $500,000 or more in state fees, environmental review, and layer time to get a new apartment complex approved"

If a complex had 500 units, thats a negligible cost

That's a nice fiction. This is a bit old (1999) [1], but California's own housing policy administration at one point sifted through the data and found it averaged something like $15k/unit for apartments, and worse for other forms of housing. I'm not sure there's any evidence it's gotten an order of magnitude better since then.

[1] https://www.hcd.ca.gov/policy-research/plans-reports/docs/pa...

Okay, so thats under 10% of the cost, it does not in anyway explain away the current problem

I can't possibly understand how you can be debating in good faith when someone shows your optimism is likely off by a factor of 10x and you try to spin that into some sort of "doesn't explain it away" non-issue. When you set the bar at $1000 a unit and it is $15k+ (in 1999 dollars) per unit, that's kind of a big deal which you disingenuously brush away because it was fantasy. Development fees are just one piece of the regulatory barrier, these expenses add up, and they absolutely help explain the problem.

A house is made up of individual pieces of wood, drywall, bricks that are "under 10% of the cost" individually by the single piece but when stacked up they absolutely help explain the (much greater) cost of the house. It's going to be difficult to point to a single smoking gun; with housing it's death by a thousand cuts (in California development fees are one of the bigger ones).

According to architects who know, it’s the price of mandatory parking, especially in MDUs, that drives up the cost of housing much more than the additional cost of adhering to more stringent building codes.

See, e.g., https://www.accessmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/20...

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