Posted on 03/30/2026 9:25:50 AM PDT by SoConPubbie
REMOVING BARRIERS TO BUILDING HOMES: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens that delay housing construction and increase housing costs for American families.
PROMOTING HOUSING AFFORDABILITY: Layers of red tape, slow permitting processes, and costly environmental mandates imposed by progressive policymakers at the state, local, and Federal level have made it harder and more expensive to build homes in America – leaving families priced out of the market and the American Dream out of reach.
DELIVERING ON PROMISES TO AMERICAN FAMILIES: President Trump has undertaken an aggressive agenda to tackle the housing challenges facing American families and make the dream of homeownership accessible again.
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Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Saves the Environmental Protection Agency from Pressure from The People to be Abolished by Congress
There, I fixed it.
About 40% of the cost of new construction is spent on satisfying local regulations and permits, and buying or bribing local inspectors.
The devil is in the details. Yes, there are regulatory impediments that should be cleared away. There are unnecessary costs that could be cut. But zoning serves a purpose.
People can and will disagree about zoning issues. So the question then becomes WHO should make the decision. At what level of government should the rules be set.
I live in a long established historic district. These issues get tricky fast. I don’t want to get into it at length, but as always, I tend to side with people trying to defend the historic character of their neighborhoods.
NIMBYism can be carried to excess. But given the dynamics here, I am not sympathetic with suburban cowboys who fled the city, have miserable commutes, treat their cul de sacs as sacred, want to slash commuter sewers through other people’s neighborhoods, and redline all assisted housing into toxic quarantine zones in the city. I’m done with suburban free riders who want to hide behind exclusionary zoning and use the city as a regional dumping ground.
Nor am I impressed with the developers who are eager to tear down walkable, bikeable, urban neighborhoods and replace them with apartment and condo blocks.
Nor am I impressed with the young people who are willing to sacrifice quiet tree lined streets for massive densification because they want to be within walking distance of bars and restaurants and think it’s cool to live in the city because the suburbs probably don’t have alcohol.
I AM sympathetic to police officers, teachers, young professionals, etc. who are unable to find decent housing within five miles of their jobs.
So how do we draw the lines? I just don’t want to hear about my obligation to accept densification from someone who will not accept section 8 housing, small apartment ubmnits, and homeless shelters on their own cul de sac.
I’m open to discussion. Just don’t monkey with my historic district. We should not Manhattanize everything in the search for cheap housing. Some of our big cities are simply too large for their own good. But the pols are addicted to endless growth to drive tax base, mainly because the government sector now operates as a giant Ponzi scheme and union extortion racket.
On a related note, why are those Soviet bloc apartments popping up everywhere?
You’d never know there was anything blocking housing construction in North Idaho. There is construction EVERYWHERE. Our Rathdrum Prairie farmland continues to get wiped out for housing. The forests in Hayden are getting mowed down for subdivisions. I’ve never seen so much housing getting built.
Plus, there’s a MASSIVE Interstate 90 expansion program going on to add more lanes and totally rebuild interchanges. They cut down a LOT of forest along the freeway to expand it and cut down hundreds of mature pines that grew on the median.
They are obviously planning for 20 years of growth there. I think they are planning for a good chunk of Seattle and Puget Sound to move our way.
It's just plain wrong.
“Homes” or apartments. I recently drove to the Oregon coast to visit family and all the areas that use to be empty land was full of huge apartment complexes.
We’re losing the Virginia and Maryland Piedmont the same way. It’s important for land preservation groups to get involved early and work to save open space, greenspace, and farm and ranch land. That means blocking endless suburban sprawl and zoning dense development into more compact areas. Also preserve stream corridors and plan intensely for parks and recreation based on worst case assumptions about the population 100 years from now. Prioritize mixed use, mixed income neighborhoods that don’t require people to jump in the car to do everything. The point isn’t to force everyone out of their cars; it’s to build neighborhoods with enough options that a lot of people can do without the car for most purposes.
It’s only going to get worse. Communities that don’t look ahead will be kicking themselves in a couple of decades as they scramble to retrofit liveability into areas that were built out mostly to serve automobiles.
I split my time between North Idaho near Coeur d’Alene and Silicon Valley. The CA Bay Area is often derided for having strict land protection policies in place the last 60 years ago that take land away from housing developments, but the green / open space buffers around here are wonderful. The sprawl around the Bay was largely complete by the end of the post-war building boom around 1960. There were plans to continue filling in the Bay, creating artificial land, and building more and more and more...but citizens got ahead of the curve and stopped much of it.
Some remaining farms and ag land did go to developers, but the housing that was built was as you describe. Large, multi-use residential / mixed use developments. There is still a staggering amount of construction going on in the Silicon Valley area, but it is all large mixed use buildings. I just got back to Silicon Valley a couple weeks ago from Idaho. I’m blown away by all the construction everywhere. I keep reading about people leaving CA, jobs and companies leaving, but there is no sign of it with the construction investment here.
I’m just starting to see some awareness in Idaho of preserving land, but the developers have all the money and the city councils cave in all the time. A couple years ago, the Coeur d’Alene city council approved a 19 story building by the CdA Resort. They tore down a 1960s single-story bank building and put up this huge building. The Front Street area is starting to look like the east coast with nothing but 15-20 story buildings lining the street, blocking the view of the lake and Tubbs Hill for anybody living just north.
I guess the problem is I grew up in a country with 140 million people, not 340 million. Back then, there was open space everywhere. Western towns were small places where people lived and worked in ag, ranching, lumber, mines and railroads. Tourism was small except in the National Parks like Yellowstone.
I keep meeting people in the Coeur d’Alene / Hayden area who say “Enough of this development. They have ruined our area. I’m leaving.” They move north past Sandpoint toward Bonners Ferry.
Times have sure changed.
I’ll meet you halfway. Howzabout we stop socializing the costs of suburban sprawl: full marginal cost pricing for new roads, water, sewers, schools, etc. We have runaway sprawl because public authorities subsidize it.
Then we could get rid of eminent domain for anything other than clear national security purposes. Put an end to turning small town streets into commuter sewers because the developers have built out the surrounding areas ... so things like tree plats, sidewalks, big chunks of front yards, on street parking in older neighborhood shopping areas tend to disappear to create new traffic lanes for suburbanites who want cheaper housing 30 miles away from their jobs and who think my neighborhood is just an impediment to be bulldozed at will.
Take away the subsidies for sprawl and the historic pattern of urban growth would reappear. There would be maximum use of existing infrastructure and a much denser pattern of development.
And oh yeah ... let’s remind the suburban commuters that shaving a couple of minutes from the commute doesn’t justify turning roads into barriers and making it impossible for people to walk safely around their own neighborhoods. There should be sidewalks along every road in urbanized places, wide shoulders in more rural areas, with a stop sign or stoplight on each block. If the commuters want to get rid of the lights, they can pay for an overpass or underpass on every block. This should be viewed as part of the cost of building the road.
If this sounds too onerous, move closer to your job.
There is an explosion of those ugly square looking apartments in the central Florida area, in areas that have big time traffic problems already.
They’re everywhere here in Arizona including downtown Phoenix, and last summer when I was in Anaheim, there were a bunch of them crammed in around the Anaheim Stadium area. Many of them are built right up against the street.
How is this not growing the federal government well beyond the bounds of either the Constitution or Federal Statutes?
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