Shipping Containers Make Surprisingly Nice Homes

A picture of Sheila Gunst’s kitchen in a 320-square-foot shipping container can be seen at this link.

Affordable Housing

Housing could also be made substantially cheaper by reducing the minimum lot sizes mandated by the government, or by permitting more homes to be built on a single lot. But zoning restrictions prevent this in America’s most expensive regions, driving up housing costs. Zoning restrictions also make housing more expensive in much of the world.

Government restrictions on the density and height of housing have contributed to housing pricesHousing costs could also be reduced by thousands of dollars by simplifying building codes. rising an average of 24 percent in the world’s 32 largest cities over just the last five years (that’s 24 percent in real terms, after adjusting for inflation). Cutting back on zoning restrictions is an idea backed by economists and housing policy experts across the political spectrum.

Housing costs could also be reduced by thousands of dollars by simplifying building codes and by making them uniform across states. Right now, building codes often vary from county to county in complicated and unnecessary ways. That makes housing construction less competitive and less able to take advantage of economies of scale.

Deregulation 

Loosening zoning and simplifying building codes would increase the supply of housing and make housing more affordable. But with rare exceptions, government officials aren’t doing that.

Instead, they are doing things that will make it even harder for many people to find a place to live. For example, Oregon recently imposed statewide rent control. That will discourage new housing construction and make things worse for future renters (and home purchasers) in the long run. Even left-leaning economists think rent control is stupid. Economists say rent controls are destructive. In a 1990 poll, 93 percent of them agreed that rent control “reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.”

Even left-leaning economists think rent control is stupid. For example, in 1972, the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck warned, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”

This article is republished with permission from Liberty Unyielding.