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Comment by ianm218 | Hacker News Reader

Housing is largely restricted by local politics and zoning not corporate interests. There’s no conspiracy on that beyond crappy local politics.

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Who do you think is paying to keep coming that way? Businesses that have an interest in keeping it that way, for example comercial realestate companies.

Based on my personal observations, most of the local zoning restrictions in the US come from conservative local residents, and not a cabal of developers. The latter want to build.

And I am using the word conservative in the non-political sense here - opposed to change. The individual motivations are many, but ultimately, a lot of people tend to avoid change around where they live.

In large cities, housing is now being built specifically for rent, and there are many early sales opportunities available exclusively to companies. In certain cities of Ireland, it is common for a new block of apartments to be sold out within the first hour. You get in a queue to visit on the first day and you don't even have a chance.

Right, that's because of the political system you guys created with local councils. There's a reason it's worse there than even in the United States.

Do you think commercial real estate are backing maintaining single family zoning in places like Palo Alto, or do you think they'd actually benefit from tossing all the zoning, and being able build, sell, and rent as many office buildings and apartments and condominiumns as possible?

Real estate development is a pretty competitive business with few barriers to entry. Nobody controls enough of the market to make it worth trying to restrict other developers.

In most cities it's developers who are pushing councils/government to rezone land so they can secure additional development sites.

I don’t think so - those companies are atleast modestly pro growth. They want to do more projects. In NYC and Boston local residents talk about “evil developers” who want to replace vacant lots with homes and businesses

I don't know about Boston case, but in Ireland it is common for developers to build and investment funds to buy it all in closed door meetings. So your only option is to rent. In other places of the world where I lived, it was common to rent a completely different region to only find out later the company letting the house/apartment belonged to the same group.

> Ireland’s planning and zoning framework is widely regarded by economists and housing experts as one of the most restrictive, bureaucratic, and hostile-to-development systems among developed common-law nations [1]

So Ireland made it almost literally illegal to build anything and it sounds like that led to bad behavior? Yes Ireland should fix corruption around building but they should also allow people to build homes.

[1]. https://www.centreforcities.org/reader/a-zoning-system-for-e...

I read it but I got curious who is centreforcities.org

The whois marks everything to private

Then you can follow things and you can see they receive 1.10m in donations https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/ch...

And there you can see this guy as the charity chairman

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/14/nigel-hugil...

And so he is a house developer? Already sounds a bit of conflict of interest. But then let's check who is the company listed

And Gatsby Is listed as a main source of income for both company and charity parts

Which is a charity by the Sainsbury family https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/ab...

I will dig this when I have time but this centreforcities is not an unbiased source of information

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