SMART. VERY SMART. Ben Carson Calls Out Zoning Regulations for Driving Up Housing Costs.

Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), wants to pare back Obama-era housing regulations that he says do not do enough to address the real driver of housing costs: zoning regulations.

On Monday, Carson announced that he was looking to revise the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which sought to combat housing segregation by requiring local governments to perform extensive (and expensive) reviews on how concentrated their neighborhoods were along class and racial lines, and then to develop action plans to create more “balanced and integrated living patterns.” Local governments that failed to fulfill either requirement would be cut off from a number of federal housing grant programs.

Carson said on Monday that he wants to replace the 2015 AFFH with new rules that focus on increasing the overall supply of housing.

“I want to encourage the development of mixed-income multifamily dwellings all over the place,” Carson told The Wall Street Journal, saying, “I would incentivize people who really would like to get a nice juicy government grant” to reform their zoning codes.

According to the Journal, Carson specifically called out Los Angeles for its strict single-family zoning rules that limit the number of housing units that can be built in the city. “Of course you’re going to have skyrocketing prices that no one can afford,” he said.

It’s as if increasing supply to meet demand might lower prices or something.