Zoning is the system of government land-use rules that govern what may be built on a given parcel and how much of it. Across three episodes of the show, guests treat zoning not as a neutral planning instrument but as a supply restriction that raises housing costs and overrides property rights. The discussion ranges from rent control and inclusionary zoning to California’s environmental review process and the example of Houston, which the excerpts say does not have proper zoning laws.
Rent control and inclusionary zoning
Randal O’Toole describes rent control as a way of taking away property rights: the owner of a house or apartment does not own the right to price it, and the renter owns that price instead. The consequence, he argues, is that builders stop building apartments and build only condos and single-family homes, because nobody wants to be a landlord when the right to price the unit is lost. He states that cities in America with rent control also have some of the most unaffordable housing, and that they do not have rent control because housing was unaffordable but have unaffordable housing because of rent control Randal O’Toole on Rising Rents (2016).
O’Toole calls inclusionary zoning, or mandatory affordable housing requirements, equally bad. Under such rules, a builder who builds more than a certain number of units per year must sell or rent a percentage — usually 15 to 20% — at below market, often below cost, as affordable housing. Builders respond by building less and by raising prices on the units they do build to make up for losses on the required affordable ones. The result, he says, is that inclusionary zoning allows a lucky few people to have affordable housing while everybody else pays more. Bob Zadek frames the same policy as a lottery: it creates so few units of affordable housing that it provides no structural or institutional solution, merely a random draw for winners and losers Randal O’Toole on Rising Rents (2016).
Zadek also raises the effect of rent control on how housing is used, describing a retired couple in a seven-room rent-controlled apartment who stay because they cannot afford to leave, leaving unused space that a family of four could occupy. O’Toole’s book on the subject, American Nightmare: How Government Undermines the Affordability of Housing, is mentioned in the episode, along with his blog The Antiplanner and papers on the cato.org website Randal O’Toole on Rising Rents (2016).
Zoning as a barrier to escaping poverty
Michael Tanner, discussing anti-poverty policy, argues that rather than debating whether to increase or cut poverty spending by a billion dollars, policymakers should look at the government policies that make people poor. Among these he lists the criminal justice system and over-criminalization, the government-run school system, government housing policies that drive up the cost of housing beyond affordability, policies that discourage savings and encourage consumption, and policies that block poor people from participating in the economy — a range that includes occupational licensure and zoning as well as minimum wage laws Libertarian Anti-Poverty Policy (2019). In Tanner’s account, zoning is one of several structural barriers that prevent poor people from getting a start in the American economy, grouped with licensing and wage rules rather than treated as a separate subject.
California zoning and the approval process
Christian Britschgi describes two basic ways government drives up the cost of housing in California. The first is restrictions on where housing can be built and how much of it can be built there: a plot may be zoned for only a single house when market demand would call for a small apartment building, and there are limits on how many new suburban subdivisions can be built. The second is a convoluted and lengthy approval process. Even where building is legal, a city may require environmental review, under which the builder must study all the environmental impacts a building might have and propose ways of mitigating them; third parties may then claim that an impact was not studied enough and sue to hold up the project for years Free to Build (2023).
Zadek presses the case for zoning as a quality-of-life good, noting that restrictive zoning preserves green space and open space that residents enjoy, and asking whether a house is a more important social good than grass. Britschgi responds that California has gone overboard in preserving open spaces, protecting marginal land that is not especially beautiful or used for recreation, and that people priced out of the Bay Area move to the Inland Empire, Nevada or Arizona, where they experience less green space but can afford housing. He argues that private property owners have voluntary means of protecting truly beautiful open space or productive agricultural land, such as conservation trusts, without government drawing a line on a map Free to Build (2023).
Zadek proposes that California’s zoning is itself a market force, because people who find the state too expensive can vote with their feet and leave. Britschgi rejects the characterization, saying that almost any government restriction could be justified that way, and that the people making zoning decisions are those already living in the jurisdiction, while people who would prefer less restrictive rules cannot afford to live there and so have no say Free to Build (2023).
Property rights, Houston, and the taxi medallion analogy
Zadek draws a distinction between two situations: government changing the rules after land is bought, which he calls regulatory eminent domain and an obscenity, and buying land already zoned in a certain way, where the price paid reflects the restriction. Britschgi acknowledges something to the distinction but notes that at one point everyone had zoning imposed on property they already owned, since the country used to have no zoning laws and states and cities passed them and made them more restrictive over time. Houston is named as the exception: it does not have proper zoning laws, nor do a few other cities around it and some very rural communities Free to Build (2023).
Britschgi compares zoning to taxi medallions. In a place like New York, a driver must buy a medallion, and because the government issues only so many, prices reached astronomically high levels — he cites half a million dollars for one. When Uber came in and got around the regulations, medallion prices fell, and medallion owners complained that they had bought into a system expecting it not to change. He says he understands why they were upset, but that maintaining the price would require sticking with a government-enforced cartel of taxi medallions, and that zoning is a similar case: to avoid ruffling the feathers of someone who bought property zoned one way, government enforces a land cartel Free to Build (2023).
Zadek adds, as an aside, that the number of taxi medallions in New York was fixed in 1938 at 13,388 and had not changed since, while the need for taxis grew; he also mentions litigation in which medallion owners sought a bailout by the city during the financial crisis. Britschgi extends the analogy to housing: in the ’60s or ’70s most cities passed big downzonings that capped how much housing would be allowed in Los Angeles, San Francisco or wherever, and as demand grew, the same dynamic set in — the price of a taxi ride goes up in New York, the cost of a house goes up in California Free to Build (2023).
Across episodes: the same argument, extended
The topic recurs across three episodes with no reversal but a widening of scope. In 2016 O’Toole treats rent control and inclusionary zoning as property-rights violations that reduce construction and raise rents for everyone but a lucky few. In 2019 Tanner places zoning in a broader list of policies that block poor people from participating in the economy, alongside occupational licensure and minimum wage laws. In 2023 Britschgi supplies the mechanism in detail — restrictive zoning, growth limits, environmental review and third-party litigation — and adds the taxi medallion analogy and the Houston exception. Zadek’s framing shifts from rent control as the 800-pound gorilla to what he calls reverse rent control, government action that pushes prices too high rather than too low, a phrase Britschgi adopts.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the names of any zoning statutes, ordinances or court cases, nor which constitutional provisions or amendments zoning disputes turn on. They do not give the founding date of zoning in the United States or the year of any particular downzoning beyond Britschgi’s general reference to the ’60s or ’70s. The episode segments break off mid-conversation in several places, and the speakers’ titles, affiliations and fields are not stated in the excerpts beyond references to Cato and to Britschgi’s and O’Toole’s writings.