I'm learning more and more about how local governments take different approaches to controlling who gets to live where. Basically they all try to keep the rich people living here, middle class here, working class here, and poor ... well a lot really seem to be out to get rid of them, but ostensibly someplace.

When I was in metropolitan areas like NYC and San Francisco, this was mostly done with a combination of zoning and developments approved. You might be zoned commercial, residential, or mixed use, for example. Though AirBnB skirts this, for the most part you can't run a business out of your home that has customers/clients coming in. It's too disruptive to people trying to just live there.

Really in metro areas anyone who isn't doing a strong 6-figures likely has a side gig, though often it's online and not public facing. I've worked from home most of the last 15 years.

And developers always want to develop for the wealthiest people they can get to buy. Cities will often give them incentives to include a certain amount of low income units, or even mandate a certain percentage be such, but in San Francisco $117,000 a year for a family of 4 is considered low income.

To place that in context, someone making twice the minimum wage in SF is making about $40,000 a year. That's considered a 'good wage if you can get it' for an awful lot of people, despite how little it actually buys there.

Meanwhile rent control means that landlords have little incentive to fix up places with longterm tenants in them. So they let the buildings fall apart until they can do a major renovation, evict all the tenants, then rebuild at market rates to cater to the six-figure crowd in tech and finance.

In the end, you wind up with enclaves that are mostly divided by income, as the rent control people get squeezed out of the city entirely and all new construction caters to tech employees. The working poor either become homeless or move elsewhere and commute very long hours for very low pay.

Different Ways Here

The same things are achieved here in Taos, but with a different approach. There doesn't seem to be zoning per se. But if a developer buys 1000 acres from an old family, he must divide it into smaller lots to sell it. The government tells him how small each lot can be and how large each house must be, even how many structures there can be on each lot and what style of buildings are allowed to be built.

So let's say you divide the 1000 acres into 200 lots of 5 acres each, and allow only one house and one in-law unit on each lot. Typically there is also a size restriction in such a case, such as there needing to be one house that is at least 1,000 square feet in size. Manufactured homes are generally forbidden at any size. Often a particular building style is required that happens to be rather expensive to build.

The sum effect of these and other rules is to make this a more expensive neighborhood to live in. You see land is relatively cheap, so they don't want someone to build a $600,000 house and wind up with someone in a $35,000 mobile home living next door.

What would be wrong with that you ask? Well the government (and developers) think it would hurt property values, so they work to prevent it.

There are also issues with water and infrastructure here, this being a desert, so sometimes an area will disallow agricultural use simply because they don't want well water being used to farm.

There is also a countywide mandate here that a home lot has to have at least .75 acres to have a septic system. Meaning you can't build any new homes on less than .75 acres unless you build in the dense and expensive county seat, which has a sewer system.

This further increases the prices for new homes. That developer couldn't turn that 1000 acres into 4000 homes (each on .25 acres, which is considered a double lot in most cities) that are affordable by middle class people. Even if he could make the same profit doing so, and so would be happy to help with the housing crisis as such, he simply isn't allowed to.

There's actually a lot more to it than just this, but I think I've made the point that whether well-intentioned or not, local governments are making decisions that lead to many homes for the wealthy (often people who only have second homes here that they live in a few months out of the year) and a massive shortage of homes for everyone else.

I found it so hard to find a rental when I was moving here last month that I finally decided to just buy a house instead!

(In the end I decided to let that deal go during negotiations and buy land that I'll build on instead. I'll update you more on that once that deal closes.)

I had the option of doing that because I'm coming in with cash, but qualifying for mortgages is no joke when there is a huge whole in the market between rich and poor. The jobs don't support the housing costs. Only people who make money elsewhere can afford to buy, and few are interested in being landlords for the poor with almost 1 acre lots.

Where You Are?

How does the local government control the housing supply where you are, and are they doing a good job of it?

What are they doing right that others might learn from?

(Photo source: Pixabay)

Resteems always appreacited!