Street Votes: A proposed response to Ireland's housing crisis
&gt;&gt;By giving locals the power to enable extra construction, and get a share of the resulting economic benefits<p>&gt;&gt;and get a share of the resulting economic benefits<p>THIS, right there, is the key.<p>Zoning rules of density caps exist to create &amp; maintain a more pleasant environment.  People building or purchasing into these areas pay higher costs initially and throughout their residency to maintain the better environment.  These include everything from higher purchase cost, higher taxes, higher maintenance costs, higher regulatory costs, and more, and the benefits are worth it to them.<p>ANY proposal to rezone at higher density essentially steals this extra value the existing residents have created over the course of decades (and generally transfers it into the pockets of the developers).  Whether it is a medium-density city street with postage-stamp lots, a tight suburb, or an exurb with genuine wildlife habitat, the value of both the existing property and the neighborhood goes down.  They get zero benefit, the benefits they&#x27;ve worked and paid to create are destroyed, and the developers extract the value of the land that is now worth more per square foot, building higher-density housing.  So, OF COURSE they vote against it at every opportunity.<p>However, this can all turn around if the existing landowners, who have paid for decades to create the value, share in the increase in values.  If the property will devalue from 500x to 400x, but the compensation is 120x, then some will still vote against it because of the intangible environmental degradation (trees, wildlife, traffic, noise, etc.), but many will happily vote for it.  The developers will still extract absurd amounts of money.<p>That is how you make it work.  An actual market mechanism, not expropriating value that homeowners have paid over decades to build with fiat dictates.