Jeremy Ney at Abundance New York describes the city’s housing costs as the cumulative effects of codes, process, and regulatory burdens. Why do these costly rules persist, despite being known to interested parties on a hot-button issue?
Because political actors benefit from the rules as written and organize to defend them. In that article about specific “building rules that can add over $100,000 in development costs to a single unit of housing,” beneficiaries appear as moral patients:
NYC political interests want to protect skilled labor workers. I’ve got empathy for this position. […]
This artificially cheap car storage induces more people to drive, which leads to more traffic and perceived parking shortages
But the record doesn’t show mainly misguided top-down paternalism driving NYC’s “death by a thousand codes,” like mandatory copper pipes and parking minimums. Organized interests advanced their own policy preferences through democratic voice.
A recent example from 2024: a proposal governing accessory dwelling units (ADUs) would have allowed plastic piping in those units under the state residential code. The Plumbing Foundation urged the Council to strike that provision. The Council’s revised bill removed it, and the final law preserved New York City’s restriction.
Likewise, representatives for disabled residents asked to keep parking minimums:
Queens Community Board 8 chair Martha Taylor said during a City of Yes review that “all this business with no parking and ½ mile to a subway station tells me the people with disabilities are screwed.”
Manhattan Community Board 8 chair Valerie Mason later told the City Council that “[t]he rich will always have parking” and “[w]e need to think about the disabled and middle class having affordable parking.”
This is public choice theory: concentrated beneficiaries organize to defend rules whose costs are dispersed across everyone else. Plumbers know exactly what’s good for their trade. Drivers know exactly what losing required parking means for them.
The people paying for those preferences are harder to organize because each person bears only a fraction of the cost. A renter may pay a little more because of copper, a little more because of parking, and a little more because of dozens of other rules that altogether register as “New York is expensive,” without knowing who made it so.