🏗️ House Hungry Nation

Why Housing is so expensive?

🎙️ Hello

My friends, gather ‘round the radio — or whatever glowing rectangle you stare at these days. Back in my day, when we built America, we laid tracks, dams, bridges, and houses faster than you could say “New Deal.” Today? You need six lawyers, three lobbyists, and a priest to bless the zoning board before you can put a roof over someone’s head. This Lowers the Supply thus Raising the Cost. Let me tell you how we turned a common house into a holy relic harder to find than a dry martini during Prohibition. 🍸

🚪 The Barriers That Strangled Housing Inventory

• Zoning Laws 🗺️🚫 → “Single-family only” rules made it illegal to build duplexes, apartments, or smaller, cheaper units in many cities.

• NIMBY Politics 🙅‍♂️🏡 → Homeowners fought new construction to protect property values, leading to fewer new builds.

• Lengthy Permitting ⏳📑 → Projects can take years (or decades) to get approved — raising costs & deterring builders.

• Land Use Limits 🌳🛑 → Height restrictions, parking minimums, greenbelt laws reduce density → less housing per acre.

• Financialization 💰🏦 → Developers chased luxury condos over affordable homes because returns were higher.

• Infrastructure Neglect 🚧 → Without transit & utilities expansion, many areas couldn’t support new housing even if demand was high.

• Low Inventory Effect 🏚️📈 → With fewer homes being built, supply stayed tight. Basic economics kicked in: demand kept rising while inventory stayed low → rents and home prices shot up far faster than wages.

🎙️ Bye for now

So here we sit, in a nation that once tamed rivers and built skyscrapers, now trapped by our own red tape 🧵✂️. We fought the Great Depression with shovels and blueprints, but today we fight each other at zoning meetings while rents eat paychecks like termites in the foundation. 🐜💸

My friends, if we do not break these barriers, we will end up as tenants in our own democracy — paying rent to a future that never got built. Now go forth, and build something taller than a backyard fence. America deserves more than a cul-de-sac economy. 🏡➡️🏙️