Housing Roundup #14: You Can't Build That
TL;DR
The throughline is brutally simple: housing is scarce because rules stop it at every stage — Zvi Mowshowitz runs through fire codes, second-stair mandates, historic preservation, floodplain rules, utility hookups, and permitting delays to argue that “you can’t build that” is often literally true.
Aesthetics matter more than a lot of pro-housing people want to admit — citing papers from David Broockman, Christopher Elmendorf, Joshua Kalla, and Adrien Petit, he says opposition to new housing is heavily driven by how buildings look and especially how tall they are, with design quality shifting support by roughly 15 points.
‘Affordable housing’ programs often make housing less affordable by adding absurd process costs — his Chicago example is a reported $750,000 per unit, with one especially ridiculous requirement asking contractors and funders to document whether they had ever invested in or profited from slavery, despite no funding decisions hinging on the answer.
Some of the most damaging rules survive even when governments know they fail cost-benefit tests — Samuel Hughes’ example on second staircases is the standout, where the government’s own analysis found costs were 294 times the benefits, yet the rule still blocks efficient apartment layouts.
The system punishes the people who actually finish buildings — in Los Angeles, completed apartment projects reportedly sat empty for months waiting for LADWP power hookup, while developers kept paying taxes, insurance, interest, and security, sometimes wiping out all profit after 3-4 years of work.
There are real bright spots, but they’re mostly statewide preemption and threshold-busting reforms — he highlights California’s SB79 near-transit upzoning, New Hampshire’s package of housing reforms, Baltimore’s six-story single-stair legalization, and New York’s Midtown South rezoning, while mocking NYC’s 99-unit building boom as a predictable response to wage mandates that kick in at 100 units.
The Breakdown
Why you can’t build the housing people say they want
Zvi opens with the core thesis: housing is expensive because the government won’t let people build where they want, how they want, at any sane cost or timeline. He immediately goes for the vivid stuff — compact, walkable neighborhoods that look great on screen, then the fire-department response: widen streets, remove parking, cut trees, add setbacks, where’s the fire lane?
Fire codes, beauty, and the politics of ugly buildings
He quotes Seth Largo’s line — “do you have the courage to hate firefighters?” — to frame how untouchable some bad rules have become. Then he pivots to new research showing aesthetics are a huge driver of anti-housing sentiment: Broockman, Elmendorf, and Kalla find ugly-looking density predicts opposition more than traffic, schools, crime, rents, or home prices, while an award-winning architect can boost support by around 15 percentage points.
Preservation, second staircases, and statistical illiteracy in land use
Historic preservation gets treated as a racket preserving parking lots and mediocre buildings at crazy cost, with the White House ballroom story used as a contrast case. Then comes one of the sharpest examples in the episode: Samuel Hughes on second-stair rules, where the government’s own analysis found costs 294 times higher than benefits, followed by floodplain anecdotes that Zvi uses to mock how badly people reason about risk.
Bureaucracy after the building is done is still enough to kill the deal
One of the most memorable stretches is about completed LA apartment buildings sitting dark because utilities won’t connect them. Zvi leans on posts from Alex Weiss, David Mahdavian, and Moses Kagan to show the human and financial cost: years of work, all capital drawn, bank pressure mounting, and developers potentially earning zero because a finished building can’t get power.
‘Affordable housing’ and supportive housing go off the rails
He repeatedly argues that official affordable-housing policy often creates scarcity instead of solving it. Chicago’s reported $750,000-per-unit cost becomes a punchline when paired with the slavery-disclosure paperwork requirement, and California’s SB549 supportive-housing language shocks him even more because qualifying projects can reserve 40% of units for the homeless or people recently in jails, hospitals, prisons, or mental institutions.
The housing we know works was often banned on purpose
Zvi says cities obsess over subsidized affordable housing because they outlawed naturally cheap housing like SROs and rooming houses. He makes the coordination-problem argument for state or federal preemption: if only one city allows SROs, it bears the burden, but if everyone must allow them, people get a low-cost rung on the ladder and fewer end up on the street.
Los Angeles and San Francisco as master classes in self-sabotage
LA gets hammered for everything from council members bragging about shrinking affordable-housing projects to Mayor Karen Bass blocking SB9 in fire-scarred areas, which Zvi says will hurt underinsured homeowners trying to rebuild. San Francisco gets its own hit list too — gas-stove-linked renovation rules, waterfront tower panic, and CEQA abuse so ridiculous that one project was blocked over evening shade on a basketball court and Woodside tried the “mountain lion sanctuary” move to stop housing.
New York’s threshold games, reform wins, and the rare notes of optimism
The New York section is classic incentive-storytelling: developers suddenly file for exactly 99-unit buildings because wage mandates kick in at 100, turning what could have been 400-unit towers into smaller, slower, pricier projects. He closes on more hopeful ground — NYC may deliver 50,000 homes in 2025, California signed SB79 and a raft of follow-on reforms, New Hampshire passed a big pro-housing package, Baltimore legalized six-story single-stair buildings, and the California Forever project gets presented as a real shot at building a new walkable city for 400,000 people.