I believe this is similar to the approach the feds used to move the drinking age to 21 [1], and the old nationwide 55 mph speed limit [2]. They didn't force states to create laws, just said "Federal highway funding will be drastically reduced to states that do not meet X" and magically, this was done.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...
2. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/four-ti...
The amount of propaganda that would be pushed out to crush any changes to zoning would be on historic levels.
Renters are a growing political force.
Renters (often under rent control) are NIMBYs as well, don't understand or are convinced that supply and demand don't apply to housing.
This is a very SF-specific view of the world. :)
Rent control is specific to just a handful of locations and is often subject to statewide restrictions (e.g. Costa-Hawkins). In general, renters are less inclined toward NIMBYism. This is especially true for the younger ones, who don't benefit as much from RC even in the locations where it exists. And even rent controlled tenants don't like the fact that they can't move.
So, if it's “almost exclusive” to any pair of states, it's New Jersey and New York, not NY and CA.
(The source is also inaccurate in at least one respect, in that NY by the description given on the page and CA due to Costa-Hawkins both meet the criteria for a “Yes” in State Prohibits or Preempts Rent Control column, but both have blanks in that column.)
Depends on how home rule is set up in that state's constitution.
Because of strategic (cynical?) choices over how voter registration is implement, tenants have far less power at the polls.
But my point is that, suppose you are a low income neighborhood and the state naturally wants to blow up your houses to put in a freeway — because they know they can’t get it put through the rich neighborhoods. Shouldn’t you still have the right to fight that?
Would it? I feel like this has Commerce Clause uber alles written all over it.
In other words, don't ask me. Ask SCOTUS. They've used the Commerce Clause to justify regulations on activities that were far less obviously about interstate commerce than zoning is, most famously in Wickard_v._Filburn, which restricts a farmers right to grow wheat on his own property for his own consumption, which, according to the court, is indeed an example of interstate commerce.
My statement, in other words, has nothing to do with my own interpretation of those rulings. It's merely an acknowledgement of them. It's not difficult to think of ways in which local zoning restrictions affect national commerce. And that's been good enough for the Court in the past, it seems.
However there’s no reason to think that would fix it all, transportation planning, design, and funding is almost entirely a state and federal affair, and the nimbys still torpedo all sorts of things that would be great for the region at the expense of a particular neighborhood or block.
To some extent though, that’s a feature of democracy, not a bug. There are a bunch of reasons we’re in the mess we’re in, and federal programs and subsidies contribute a lot. The threat to take away federal funding for places that don’t accept housing growth may be more effective than a brute force approach in the end, who knows.