Regulatory
The rules won’t allow it
Zoning that forecloses multifamily by default, discretionary review with no fixed clock, and political resistance to density that outlasts any single hearing.
Los Angeles · San Francisco
A Housing Research Publication
American cities can't build housing. No two of them for the same reason.
Housing scarcity looks like one problem and behaves like several. This publication examines American cities one at a time to identify the constraint actually binding supply in each (regulatory, capital, or structural), combining policy analysis with a development model that puts each diagnosis in dollars.
The Framework
Three ways a city can fail to build
Capital
The money won’t come
Construction cost exceeds what a lender or equity partner will underwrite against achievable rents. The entitlement isn’t the problem, the return is.
Detroit · Post-Industrial Metros
Structural
The place won’t fit it
Geography, lot geometry, and an existing built form set a hard ceiling on incremental supply that no amount of policy reform alone resolves.
San Francisco · Coastal Metros
The Development Model
One measure among several
Every city report runs the same five-metric scorecard and narrative diagnosis before it reaches a number. This chart is one way of putting a single piece of that diagnosis in dollars, not the whole of it.
One measure of the constraint
Return on cost
Regulatory constraint Frictionless baseline
How to Read This
Return on cost is what a finished building earns each year, divided by what it cost to build. The number alone means little. What matters is how it compares to the rate that finished buildings of the same type actually trade at. That difference is the value a developer creates by building rather than buying. Ground-up apartments generally need at least 1.25 percentage points of cushion to attract investors. So each city's threshold here is the rate its finished buildings trade at, plus 1.25 points. The hatched area is how far short each city falls. Below the line, the money goes somewhere else. The baseline on the right is the same building with none of the frictions this publication studies: cheap land, fast permits, cheap debt.
City Reports
The diagnosis, city by city
R-01 Washington, D.C. The city hit its housing target the year the pipeline ran dry. Regulatory Draft · Sourced R-02 Los Angeles A city that wants density on paper and blocks it in practice. Regulatory Upcoming R-03 Detroit The zoning would allow it. The appraisal won't support it. Capital Upcoming R-04 San Francisco Seven square miles, most of it already built. Structural Upcoming R-05 New York City The rules and the geology both say no, in different boroughs. Regulatory + Structural Upcoming R-06 Miami Plenty of capital. Almost none of it chasing workforce housing. Capital Upcoming
The Method
How each city is measured
Every report in this publication is scored against the same five metrics before any narrative is written. The framework changes by city; the ruler doesn't.
M1
Permits issued per 1,000 residents
Annual pace of new housing authorization relative to population.
M2
Median permit approval time
Months from application to issuance, entitlement to permit.
M3
Rental vacancy rate
Slack, or lack of it, in the existing rental stock.
M4
Median rent-to-income ratio
Cost burden on the households already living there.
M5
Share of land zoned single-family
How much of the map legally excludes multifamily by default.
Source: U.S. Census Building Permits Survey · HUD · FRED · municipal planning departments