Rethinking Housing Policy

The housing crisis isn't going away on its own, and every effective intervention comes with trade-offs that policymakers keep dodging.

Breaking free from Roman architecture

Western societies remain stuck in Roman-influenced architectural paradigms. We need to look at Asian urban planning models that successfully adapted to density through vertical development. Expect resistance though—Western culture has developed an irrational stigma against high-density housing that treats skyscrapers as dystopian rather than practical.

The Roman precedent we forgot

The Romans themselves built high-density housing when population density demanded it. Vitruvius wrote in De Architectura (II, 8, 17) that Rome's population made single-story housing untenable — circumstances "compelled the resort to the expedient of raising the height of buildings."

The Regionaries — two 4th-century catalogs of Rome's buildings — record over 44,000 insulae (multi-story apartment complexes), though scholars debate whether these counts refer to whole buildings or individual rental units. Remains are still visible at the Insula dell'Ara Coeli in Rome and throughout Ostia Antica, typically surviving to 3-4 stories: ground-floor tabernae (shops) with residential floors above.

Augustus banned buildings higher than 70 Roman feet (≈21m) to reduce fire risk and collapses, as described in Strabo's Geography 5.3.7. Trajan later reduced this to 60 feet. At roughly 10 Roman feet per floor, that meant 6-7 stories maximum.

The same constraint shows up elsewhere. Haussmann-era Paris (1859 decree: 20m cornice height on major avenues) and Soviet khrushchevkas (5 stories — the maximum allowed without installing an elevator) both hit similar ceilings. Without elevators, hauling water, fuel, and groceries beyond 5-6 floors just doesn't work.

The Romans hit a technological ceiling. We don't have that excuse anymore. We have elevators, steel-frame construction, and fire suppression systems. Yet many Western cities still zone as if we're building for a pre-elevator world, artificially constraining density through nostalgia rather than engineering limits.

No silver bullets

No single policy solves housing affordability. What works in Tokyo may not work in Berlin or San Francisco. The only honest approach is running multiple experiments simultaneously and measuring what actually happens, rather than committing to one ideology.

The inevitable crash

Any policy that successfully improves housing affordability will crash real estate asset values. That will hurt people who over-invested in property as their retirement strategy. But continuing to prop up asset prices means perpetuating the crisis for everyone else. You can't have both.

Tax abandoned properties

Vacant and abandoned properties should face escalating annual taxes based on a percentage of assessed value. The tax rate should increase each year the property remains abandoned, creating strong incentives to either develop, sell, or rent. This prevents speculative hoarding and returns housing stock to productive use.

Make rehabilitation tax-deductible

To offset abandonment penalties, costs to repair or rehabilitate properties should be fully tax-deductible. This creates a clear path forward for property owners: either invest in making housing available, or pay escalating taxes on the dead asset.

While social housing works in limited cases, it's not a realistic solution at scale. Construction costs are prohibitively high, and eligibility rules become arbitrary gatekeeping mechanisms. Instead of government-built housing, focus on policies that enable private markets to build abundant housing at multiple price points.

Most of this comes down to supply — restrictive zoning, NIMBYism, and treating housing as an investment vehicle rather than infrastructure. The fixes aren't mysterious, but they cost political capital that nobody wants to spend.