The government shouldn’t tell people where to live

Housing belongs where the demand is

Conor Dougherty, who’s done a ton of great work on the housing beat over the years, wrote a piece for the New York Times recently with the headline “America Needs More Sprawl to Fix Its Housing Crisis.”

On the one hand, I sympathize. I am anti-anti-sprawl. I like parks and wildlife preserves, and I’m all for investing funds in creating them. But I think that suburban jurisdictions implementing large lot zoning rules and saying they are fighting sprawl is really bad, and that rebranding the large lot zoning as an “agricultural reserve” doesn’t change that analysis. I also think that if you look at the really dire housing situation in the United Kingdom, it’s clear their anti-sprawl “greenbelt” policies that prevent new suburban subdivisions outside of London and other major cities are a huge contributor to the problem.

But when these arguments cross into overt pro-sprawl takes, I get a little bit nervous.