Here’s a [great article](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/the-housing-crisis-as-a-land-crisis) from Greg Miller of the [Center of Land Economics](https://landeconomics.org) that explains the situation well. Some snippets:

\>Researchers from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) have constructed a [database](https://www.fhfa.gov/research/papers/wp1901) of land values at the local level using sales and construction data across the country. This gives us access to understand the time trends of land values, though at an admittedly zoomed-out level. Their data shows that over the past decade, the share of residential property value attributable to land has risen, particularly in urban areas. In rural areas, the land share has declined over the same period.

\>This pattern is revealing. When rents rise without material improvements to buildings, what is increasing is not the value of the structure but the value of the location. When a homeowner’s property tax assessment rises despite no changes to the home itself, that increase reflects land value

…

\>From the stagnation of transportation networks and the tightening of credit markets to the shifting dynamics of labor and household structures, modern economic life has ruthlessly re-concentrated demand into specific, job-rich regions. These pressures act as a funnel, boosting the value of land where housing density has failed to keep pace with the influx of people.

\>High prices persist because the constraints on that land persist. We cannot overcome the housing crisis without first dealing with the land crisis that underpins it.

…

\>We can start by allowing more housing to be built where demand is highest. Zoning has existed largely since urban renewal, and matters more today than ever as demand for urban areas increases. However, [upzoning is not enough](https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/land-and-the-liberty-to-build-on) as it does not address the roots of land speculation. In many urban cities, vacant land or parking lots already empty despite having developable capacity.

Which then naturally leads into the fact that, instead of taxing what people produce and provide, we should instead charge compensation for (or otherwise reform) those [resources that are finite](https://www.reddit.com/r/georgism/comments/1jya0qe/a_nonexhaustive_catalogue_of_economic_rent_sources/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) because we can’t produce more of them; land most importantly.

\>The housing crisis isn’t an inevitable fact of nature; it’s a policy choice. By loosening the land constraint, we can finally build the dense and affordable communities the 21st century demands.

The housing crisis starts in the land