This is the Cato Daily podcast for Friday, December 20th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

They don't make towns like they used to.

In many towns and cities, it's illegal to build anything like the buildings that currently exist and are still being used.

Why isn't the public up in arms about it? Drew Klein is

president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy in New Hampshire. He says they largely don't know.

We spoke in Phoenix in August. Housing is the hot topic. I've recorded a lot with people talking

about housing. I've talked a lot about housing here at the state policy network, and it's a very hot topic.

It's a very salient topic, and the unfortunate fact about the housing crisis in America is that that's going to be a salient topic for at least a decade or more.

And so in New Hampshire,

you know, the live-free or die state, the state with revolution built into its constitution,

what has been the people love their land, they love their property rights, but human nature

tells us that people love to tell other people what to do

with their own property.

Well, one of the other aspects of human nature is the fear of outsiders, right?

So New Hampshire, because of its economic success, attracted a lot of people who moved here

from out of state, but also just who were, we were thriving.

We were booming families in the 60s, 70s, and 80s were growing. People were moving here.

And a lot of towns in New Hampshire responded to our economic success by passing land use ordinances, specifically designed to limit, restrict, or even stop population growth.

And it worked. So in the 1970s in New Hampshire, you would on a, you know, roughly yearly basis have maybe five, six, seven, even nine thousand

building permits per year for residential housing when you include single family and multifamily.

In the 80s, that got up to five digits.

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