Don’t Blame Tech Bros for the Housing Crisis

Rising housing costs predate the tech bubble. And it will take more than Apple and Facebook’s billions to fix it.

By Margaret O’Mara of The NY Times.

"The spiraling housing costs in West Coast tech hubs are the result of 40 years of tax and land use policy — a period that mirrored the explosive growth of the tax-averse tech industry. This was also a time of continued activism by homeowners against higher-density zoning. Together, this has severely limited housing construction, particularly lower-cost houses and apartments. It is a chronic condition, inflamed by the current tech boom.

California’s saga began in the 1970s, when sprawling growth and spiking taxes seemed to threaten the quality of life so many came to the Golden State to find. Citizen activists created “urban growth boundaries” and land trusts to preserve open space and delicate coastal habitats. Yet these important moves also limited where developers could build new homes. Meanwhile, homebuilders chafed under what they saw as burdensome state rules about how many approvals they needed to build new housing."

"There was some substantive action: In 1994, two of the state’s largest pension funds announced more than $340 million in construction loans for affordable development. But 25 years later, distressingly little has changed. California is America’s largest economy; but when its politicians have pushed to diversify its housing mix, they have been batted back by homeowners who resist new development in their neighborhoods."

"Seattle also has an affordable-housing shortage that predates the tech boom. Since its first zoning restrictions in 1923, the city has steadily expanded single-family residential zoning in ways that have limited housing supply and preserved racial and economic segregation. Today’s Seattle is larger, richer and more crowded, but remains overwhelmingly a city of single-family homes. The city abandoned plans to increase housing density in some neighborhoods after pressure."