The fact is, big developers love housing restrictions. Here in Vancouver, they buy up strips of land along arterial roads and then lobby the city council to approve mega towers along them. If you were allowed to build medium density everywhere, big developers would lose control. NIMBYs and big developers are often on the same side, and they often support the same conservative pro-business city parties.

We’ll never see affordable housing without broad changes to zoning, less community obstruction, and more public investment in non-market housing.