> If all neighborhoods had a mix of people, you wouldn't have quite so much of a concentration of people who aren't as wealthy.
I don't think this is possible, or even desirable.
A huge part of a home's value is the neighborhood. How much crime is there? How good are the schools? How are the neighbors?
A "fancy" house and an "affordable" house in the same neighborhood are not going to have a large price difference. If you revert every neighborhood to the mean, then you more or less revert all property prices to the mean. Which means you have erased all the "affordable" housing options, and also reduced the QOL of the top 50% of people.
You're missing the simple factor of square footage. A 1000 sq ft unit is going to be about a quarter of the price of a 4000 sq ft one for the simple reason that otherwise the larger unit would be subdivided or vice versa. So people with less money get less space, but that doesn't mean they can't live on the same street.
Also, even to the extent that values are dominated by other factors, the intention is to increase housing availability through higher supply and lower prices. All housing becoming as expensive as upper middle class housing would be a problem, but all housing becoming as affordable as existing low income housing would be great.
Your expectation is that a 1000 sq ft "house" on a quarter acre of land would cost on the order of the same amount as a 4000 sq ft "house" on a full acre of land?
I'm saying that houses and plots of land with houses on them are not trivially subdivided like apartment complexes are. It is rare to see a house directly across the street from a house that is 4x larger and on 4x as much land. But if you did, the price difference between those houses would be much less than 4x, because so much of the value of a home comes from the neighborhood.
Its the same exact reason why houses cost more in Boston than in Wyoming, but on a different scale. The value of a home is heavily influenced by its location.
I think its reasonable to expect this to be more true of houses than apartments. Someone who is buying a house and putting down roots is going to care more about "the neighborhood" than someone who plans to move on in a year or two.
> It is rare to see a house directly across the street from a house that is 4x larger and on 4x as much land.
This is unambiguously as a result of zoning. It's rare to divide a one acre plot into four quarter acre plots because it's prohibited.
> Its the same exact reason why houses cost more in Boston than in Wyoming, but on a different scale. The value of a home is heavily influenced by its location.
Nobody is disputing that. But all that means is that a quarter acre plot in Boston costs the same as a full acre plot in Wyoming. It still costs a lot less than a full acre plot in Boston, which is often the only option the existing zoning makes possible.
You could at the very least, leave it to the market, rather than using government policy mostly shaped by older, wealthier people to heap more crap on people who are in less fortunate circumstances.
Where I lived in Italy, you actually had very different homes very close by - big expensive single family units right next to 10 plexes that are far more affordable.
Frankly, I think it was healthier for my kids to go to school there with both some kids from wealthy families as well as Nigerian immigrants. Their schools here are much more homogeneous.
I don't think this is possible, or even desirable.
A huge part of a home's value is the neighborhood. How much crime is there? How good are the schools? How are the neighbors?
A "fancy" house and an "affordable" house in the same neighborhood are not going to have a large price difference. If you revert every neighborhood to the mean, then you more or less revert all property prices to the mean. Which means you have erased all the "affordable" housing options, and also reduced the QOL of the top 50% of people.