Nobody has an inherent right to live anywhere. It doesn't matter if your parents live there. Your grandparents. Your friends. You don't have any inherent right to be their neighbor. You don't have a right to buy across the street or even across town. It's a free market and if 100 other people want to live in the same place and are willing to pay more than you, then you're not going to live their either.

After this zoning change goes through and new houses are built, I'd wager those new houses will still be still priced out of reach of people that want to live in a given area. I'm not saying it's not going to help, but it's not going to magically create 10x the housing density in a given area and bring housing prices down to the point where a low income worker can afford a home. That's a pipe dream.

Why's it got to be about rights? It's possible to decide it's nicer if people can live near their parents and grandparents and friends, than not, and change systems and policies such that that's a more-accessible way of living, without it being a right.

[EDIT] And that's putting aside that "right" just means "thing we like a bunch", anyway.

Nobody has an inherent right to live anywhere but people have the right to control their neighbors' property through zoning?

You could make this argument about other laws too. Do you have a right to control your neighbors ability to cook meth? It’s bad for the rest of us if they do, so we ban it.

Society creates laws that affect each other and zoning is no different.

If I live in a cute little community and my neighbors all agree that we like it how it is, we can collectively agree to keep it like that.

If that little neighborhood had a dense block of apartment buildings, many of the people who originally lived there wouldn’t want to stay.

Now, all that in mind, I generally agree that we need to fix zoning. I’m not a homeowner and want to buy property in places that are currently too expensive for me..

But I completely understand that people would be upset to build a community somewhere, then gradually be pushed away because a few of their neighbors sold to a big company, and their neighborhood doesn’t fit their needs anymore.

Even if the majority want to stay, they get forced away by a few using their land in ways that are bad for the rest of the group.

If the majority want to keep their community unchanged, they can buy out their neighbors who want to sell.

Builder's remedy or state-imposed zoning has no power if no one ever sells to a developer, right?

Plus you're comparing living in a more dense neighborhood to cooking meth. I can't take you seriously at all.

I was using the cooking meth as an example of something that negatively impacts a community even if it seem to only impact the individual at first glance. Maybe a little too extreme of a comparison, but I was just trying to make a point that it’s not unprecedented to make laws that limit other people’s ability to do things with their property.

And I do prefer dense walkable neighborhoods personally, but I just also understand the frustration of a community living somewhere because of some quality of that neighborhood, then having that quality ripped away just because a small number of previous inhabitants left.

There are no guarantees in life. You could allow hyper-local zoning and still have some terrible neighbors that don't pick up dog shit and have loud parties all night. People trying to "keep property values up" has also led to some terribly discriminatory behavior in the past - we should be glad that such kinds of exclusion are no longer legal.

If "quality of neighborhood" is so important then said neighborhood should, as I stated above, put their money where their mouth is. Maintain a common fund, and commit to match any offer for any house going up for sale in the community. Stop using everyone else's taxpayer dollars to have cities pass and enforce laws to do it.

I think it is pretty clear from an ethical perspective that whatever rights people have to housing are stronger than whatever rights people have to block housing in their neighborhood. It takes a weird sort of mental gymnastics to simultaneously argue that no one has a right to housing but also that people have a right to using zoning laws to block housing.

I agree with you on that. I never said they have a right to live there.

I asked OP why the people who don't own that property, and have no ties to it (other than potentially living near it), should be able to decide that others _can't_ live there through restrictive zoning.

If it's actually a free market, and people have interest and money to afford to live in an area, and a property owner has property and interest to build housing they can afford, why should people with no interest in the property get to decide they should live elsewhere?

Mild disagree — not everything has to be about über-capitalism and the free market. Sometimes we should just make it easy to live in places (within reason) just for the sake of being human. We all share this earth, together.

We don't need a housing market where buying a small fixer upper costs millions. That's unjust.

> Nobody has an inherent right to live anywhere

But you have an inherent right to deny someone to live somewhere?