I received this comment John in Cary on my report with Abby Alger.  “Un-Affordable Housing: Cities keep low- and middle-income families from home ownership” 

Good article.  It hits me close to home in Cary, and with my friends in Europe, and my home town in New York.  I am no policy analyst, but if I may suggest, there may be a need for a related article that would compare this local government restrictive laws phenomenon to similar local government restrictive laws in Europe and/or in northern states of the US.   
We recently visited friends who moved to Scotland.  Scotland is a gorgeous country.  They live in a quaint (quaint just means old and needs fixing up) 1,800 square foot home on a tiny 1/8 acre piece of land for over a $half million!  For them, this was a step down from a 2,400 square foot home in Cary on 10 acres of land, which sold for just under $400,000.  Their new home is in a lovely and not-so-dense suburb, Torrance (pop. 2,500) outside Glasgow (pop. 615,000).  Perhaps one cannot say the large pricing differences are due to market conditions since population size and land layout is very similar (however land availability in Scotland is likely more restricted artificially).  The huge price differences may be due to a huge pent up demand; there are more people who want to live in Torrance than there are available affordable housing options or development plans.  Like Scotland, it is my understanding that many places throughout Europe have much more restrictive laws on new development, green belts, how exactly each home can be built, etc.  How much of the higher prices in Europe are due to more restrictive European home ownership policies vs. market conditions?  Many of these European restrictive laws and regulations may have similarities to those in the US, however, I would hypothesize that the European housing-related policies are much more extreme and detrimental.  This all contributes to restrictive housing availability and much less affordability in Scotland/Europe.  I fear, that here in the US and Cary, the governmental interventionalists (who ? like Europeans – just can?t stop themselves from meddling) will drive many US cities and towns into a Europe-like situation, and we all have ridiculously high priced homes and faltering economies. 
 
But this presents a moral hazard to home owners here too.  Cary home owners (and my neighbors have said they) favor restrictive policies because they increase their land value (which they actually do ? see Chapel Hill); i.e., restrictions on people moving in to the area with impact fees, restrictions on land use and upfitting/upgrading, whatever.  These work as long as the area still has fast population increases.  Home owners think it?s good for them since restrictions artificially increase home values.  However, it harms the area economy overall in the long run, but a lot of home owners are in denial or just don?t care, as long as they get their personal financial benefit from these restrictive government policies.  When one day the population stops growing or reverses. the government leaders and the voters won?t have the inclination or courage to remove the restrictive land laws to try to re-stimulate the community.
 
Not only Europe, but many US northern towns have had economic and population declines perhaps greatly due to many similar local government restrictions, that only strangle the area economy.  Despite economic doldrums, northern towns oddly retain artificially high priced homes (e.g., Glens Falls, NY ? my home town of now 14,000 people.  It used to be well over 20,000 when I was growing up there).   I also fear that Cary will be slowly headed on the same path as Glens Falls, NY or Torrance, Scotland; some day Cary will have a no more population increases, and a decaying economy and everyone who remains behind in an economically stagnant community will also be left wondering why or how this all happened and have no clue how to or the courage to improve their situation.
Thanks

John
Cary