Yeah, everything you asked are good questions.

But the striking thing about this work is that it shows how some sets of answers are much, much worse than others -- and that the price is disproportionately borne at the low end of the socio-economic stratum. The Houston and Boston metro areas have about the same population, but the median cost of housing in Boston is about 3 times that of Houston's (350K vs 120K).

That's a big difference -- a 30-year mortgage in Houston would be an $800/mo payment, vs. a $2330/mo payment in the Boston area. A lower-middle class family in Houston can reasonably expect to be able to own a home. A home is mostly out of the reach for middle class families living inside the Boston. That's really bad news, because homes are one of the principal means of capital accumulation for the non-rich: investment vehicles like stock are only owned by slightly more than half of the population, and savings accounts don't generate signficant investment returns.

I wonder how much of our underclass would be able to get out of poverty if there were fewer regulations keeping them there. The heartening implication from this study stems from the fact that zoning regs are all local -- this means that individual, local, activism is likely to be able to effect some positive change. If it were Washington regulations that were the problem it would take a much larger effort to solve. Now I feel all politically motivated. :)