What we’ve got to do as a country when it comes to affordable housing we need to look at the past conditions that allowed us to have some of the most affordable housing on the planet. Part of this is taking a deep dive at everything, and not liking some of the answers.
For example, not long ago in my own mostly rural county, if you wanted to build a house, you didn’t need permission from anybody. You would just go build it. No permits, no governmental bureaucracy, no red tape. Just build it. I’d say this was the way it was done in the country forever, probably up until the 1960’s, with the last area’s probably adopting at least minimal requirements in the 1990’s.
Now, I’m sure we could debate the pros and cons of this all day long. Obviously, there were some problems. Zoning, inferior construction, ramshackle structures or structures that did not hold up in areas like Florida or Texas when hurricanes start rolling in every few years instead of every decade. But I’d wager to guess that this was a major driver of affordable housing in years past. I’m not advocating for a no permit free for all, but maybe we could identify excessive regulations and trim them down.
