To the Editor:
“America Needs to Build More Housing” (editorial, May 24) does well to unpack America’s housing crisis and the decades of bad zoning policy that caused it.
Shared blame for the crisis, however, lies with the judiciary, which blessed the dramatic expansion of local zoning power.
Initially, courts upheld zoning as a means for nuisance prevention. But in the 1974 Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas case, the Supreme Court ruled that municipalities could cap the number of unrelated people living together and regulate the look and feel of a neighborhood. So Belle Terre could prohibit unrelated Stony Brook University students from renting a house together, even though nobody claimed they were a nuisance. Municipalities were then empowered to pass zoning codes that permitted a certain aesthetic, or type of housing.
Today, that authority is wielded nationwide to thwart much-needed development, making housing more expensive for everyone.
Since the courts contributed to the problem, they can help fix it. They can start by acknowledging that it is unconstitutional to leverage zoning as a force for social engineering, or to use it to restrain the supply of housing.
Ari S. Bargil Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The writer is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice.
To the Editor:
Government data shows that the median size of a house was about 1,500 square feet in 1960, about 1,750 square feet in 1987 and nearly 2,200 square feet in 2025. (It peaked at 2,500 square feet in 2015.)
The average size of a family was 3.7 people in 1960, 3.19 in 1987 and 3.15 in 2025. (The Census Bureau historically tracks average rather than median size for families.)
So the living area per person in 1960 was about 400 square feet versus nearly 700 square feet in 2025.
If people refused to buy large houses and demanded smaller, less expensive ones, the market would adjust and build them. The market includes elected officials who adopt local zoning and building codes, builders and lenders. The editorial cites several areas where these changes are being made, but does not address the personal “wants versus needs” issue.
For many people, there is a seemingly insatiable appetite to improve their standard of living at a cost to their financial security and personal well-being.
Realistically, the family “financial crisis” will improve only when people better understand the mechanics of spending/savings/investment versus earning power and make practical adjustments to their wants and needs.
Unfortunately for some, it will take financial ruin to force those adjustments.
Steve Gaber Bellingham, Wash.
To the Editor:
This analysis correctly identifies restrictive zoning and permitting as primary obstacles to housing affordability and says increased construction is the solution, but omits a factor making that solution harder to achieve: the mass deportation of construction workers.
According to the Urban Institute, immigrants accounted for more than 23 percent of the American construction work force in 2023, with undocumented workers making up roughly half of that share. In Texas, the state your article celebrates as a model, an estimated 337,000 construction workers are undocumented.
A Center for American Progress study from 2021 found that undocumented workers made up 38 percent of drywall installers, 32 percent of roofers and 29 percent of painters nationwide. The Times reported recently that surges in deportations have led to job losses for both immigrant and American-born workers, while wages have stayed flat.
Removing these workers reduces labor supply, slowing construction and raising costs and home prices, adding inflationary pressure at a time American families can least afford it.
Basic economics is unambiguous: Reducing labor supply while demand remains constant raises costs. The current deportation policy is, in effect, an inflationary housing policy.
Giacomo Santangelo Bronx The writer is a senior lecturer in economics at Fordham University.
To the Editor:
I can recall the rent I was paying in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Recently, I plugged those numbers into an inflation calculator to determine what the rents would be for apartments I lived in nearly half a century ago in New York and San Francisco if prices had tracked with inflation.
The inflation-adjusted rents would be about $1,000 monthly for all three. The two San Francisco studios rent for about $3,000 today, and the New York apartment probably for a bit more.
Alice Bray New York
The Super El Niño and a Looming Hunger Catastrophe
To the Editor:
Re “The World Is About to Get a Preview of Life in 2035,” by David Wallace-Wells (Opinion, nytimes.com, May 6):
Mr. Wallace-Wells is right to invoke Mike Davis, who said the 1877 El Niño punished those who had already been made vulnerable. The coming El Niño will do the same. Climate shocks are both drivers of hunger and risk multipliers that deepen existing vulnerabilities.
What Mr. Wallace-Wells does not mention is the powerful vulnerabilities that the world currently faces. Conflict has turned the Strait of Hormuz into a choke point that severely limits the flow of energy and fertilizer critical to agriculture.
The 1877 catastrophe hit a population made defenseless by a food system that was broken. The 2026 El Niño is forming in the context of a global agrifood system strained by rising fertilizer costs, reduced application rates and tightening trade flows. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization tracks agricultural conditions and sees a system with a diminished capacity to absorb a shock of the scale described in the essay. The buffers — fiscal, logistical and humanitarian — have been drawn down by successive crises and have not been rebuilt.
Mr. Wallace-Wells is right to ask what a super El Niño will do to our complacency. But the more urgent question is what it will do to the 280 million people already facing acute food insecurity, and to the millions more who could be pushed into acute hunger by the conflict in the Middle East, even before a single El Niño-induced harvest failure occurs.
Máximo Torero Cullen Rome The writer is the chief economist at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Luke’s War Museum
To the Editor:
Re “The 15-Year-Old Keeping War Memories Alive,” by Jasper Craven and Amina Gingold (Opinion guest essay, May 24):
Thank you for publishing this essay about 15-year-old Luke Morrison’s trailer museum showcasing the stories of veterans and their artifacts of war.
While most 15-year-olds I know spend their free time scrolling TikTok, this young man has turned his passion and curiosity toward a noble cause: making history come alive to honor those men and women who put themselves in harm’s way, sometimes for causes beyond what they signed up for.
I’d like to think that people leave the museum trailer with a renewed respect for veterans and all the reasons we should do everything in our power to avoid having to send others to the front line. At 15, Luke Morrison seems to understand that. He is a hero in my book.
Fay Ellis Maplewood, N.J.
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