By Yevgeny Shrago
Slate economics blogger Matthew Yglesias recently released a new eBook single, titled The Rent is Too Damn High. Yglesias’s book blames high rents on inefficient land use, caused largely by various governmental anti-density restrictions. I’m highly sympathetic to Yglesias’s position. Ideally, desirable land would be used as densely as the market would bear, lowering rents on each unit to make housing more affordable while increasing the effectiveness of government services and raising overall land values. However, Yglesias’s focus on zoning and other governmental restrictions ignores the important private bars on density caused by restrictive covenants.
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