He's referring to the hundreds of houses that were knowingly built in a floodplain, because Houston does not have the kind of zoning that would have prevented that. Those houses are at high risk of flooding any time there is a storm, and many of them did flood during last year's storms.

It's easy to have cheap housing when you ignore common sense and just build wherever. (Also, part of the expense for LA and SF is that we have earthquakes, and our buildings have to be built to withstand earthquakes. For example: a 5.4 earthquake in 2011 caused over $300 million in damage on the East Coast. A series of CA earthquakes stronger than that in 2019, including 6.4 and 7.1 quakes, only caused a few thousand in damage near the epicenter. A 5.1 earthquake earlier this year in SoCal caused so little damage that most people slept through it and only know it happened because the news reported it. Note that each "magnitude" is about 30x difference in strength, so the 6.4 quake was 30x stronger than the 5.4 quake, and the 7.1 quake was nearly 900x stronger.)

I'm not sure what codes are in Texas, but I can tell you in MN the housing codes are designed nationally to cover CA earthquakes and Florida Hurricanes even though both are not factors. Of course those codes also cover insulation which the other two states don't really need as much of..

Housing codes are adopted at the municipal or state level. There is no mandatory "national" building code in the U.S., though there is a "model" building code at the national level upon which the state and local building codes are based. (https://localhousingsolutions.org/housing-policy-library/hou...)

Specifically, Texas just uses the ICC's IRC, while California has the California Building Standards Code, which has additional requirements to account for our many earthquakes (https://peer.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/peer2019-05_ss...).

You can't compare prices across geographic areas like that. For instance, property taxes are way higher in Houston. Assuming everything else was equal, the price of real estate in Houston would be less simply because it has higher carrying costs. That's just one of many possible differences unrelated to zoning.

There are no income taxes in Houston though, so while the property tax load is higher, the tax part of cost of living is not very different. (depending on what state you compare to)

I live in Palo Alto and saw a local ad for an acre of land with no house in Atherton going for $5.2M. The housing here is really screwed.

With a moderate density like 40du/acre, that amounts to about $130,000 in land cost per unit, which is not so bad!

even at our grossly inflated land costs, simply allowing density throughout the Bay Area would enable much more housing affordability, allow more transit, and reduce our emissions and enhance our social contact. But a side benefit of broad legalization of density would be that those land costs would drop dramatically too, as there would be a much greater supply.

California cities like Atherton, Woodside, Bradbury, San Marino, etc. are bad metrics to use for anything approaching affordable housing.

It just highlights the craziness of the area and zoning rules

There's also the matter of cause and effect

- Is it a desirable location, and the zoning laws cause the prices to skyrocket because not all the people that want to live there can

- Is it desirable because the zoning laws make sure it's a certain type of environment, and the desirability is what causes the price to increase

- Is it a combination of the two.

I think any reasonable person would say it's a combination of the two. And removing the zoning laws would both make it less desirable _and_ lower the price of housing. It would not leave it just as desirable, but with more people living there.

that's about 90 apartment units, or ~ $60k/unit in land cost...

Currently atherton zones only allow one family house per acre (with this change you could convert it into flats now though!)

No doubt the $5.2MM anticipated the zoning changes. No one would be stupid enough to sell property based on the law today if you knew it was going to change tomorrow.

Atherton is the Beverley Hills of Northern California.

But think about the aesthetics!!!! /s

I mean, houses abutting landfills are even cheaper, but no one would consider "put landfills everywhere" a good strategy.

Houston has had a stable population (per square mile) over the past decade and has a median income of ~$50,000. Sacramento has had the population per square mile increase by ~15% in the past decade and has a median income of ~$71,000. San Francisco has had the population per square mile increase by ~9% in the past decade and has a median income of ~$126,000.

When looking at market prices, how should we distinguish between "affordable" and "undesirable"?

California has a population density of 249.1 people per sq mile compared to 103.2 people per sq mile in Texas. Seems an obviously more important factor here.

Both states have a lot of rural areas that should not be counted when considering density. CSA and MSA for a city are the easiest to look up that can be compared. Even then though things are misleading. (the MSA for my city is mostly large farms so overall our density is very low, but if you only take the parts that look like a city is much higher)

Wow, Sacramento looks like a really good deal. Almost as cheap as Houston, it probably has better weather as well?

Yes, zoning is a terrible idea, a way to insert politics literally in our homes, or at least the land the home sits on.