Slagboom for Moscow
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Housing: The Platform

Let Builders Build

Housing is expensive because permission is expensive. The rules made homes scarce. The council can change the rules. Here is the evidence, and here is the fix.

The Problem

In the 1990s the typical American home cost about three times the median household income. Today the ratio is 5.0, tying the highest on record. Since 2020, home prices rose more than 50% and rents more than 30%, while prices overall rose about 25%.

The Cause

For decades before the pandemic, the real cost of building a home barely moved. What changed is the cost of permission: zoning bans, lot minimums, parking mandates, fees, and delay. Economists call the gap between build cost and sale price the regulatory tax.

The Fix

Let builders build. Where building is legal and fast, prices sit near the cost of construction. Federal law now authorizes $200 million a year in competitive grants for cities that remove the barriers.

The Two San Franciscos

In 1906, an earthquake and fire destroyed half of San Francisco's homes. A month later the newspaper carried ads for flats, not shortage stories. Prices were free to rise, so builders built and people economized. In 1946, a smaller shock hit a city under rent control, and the legislature called the shortage the most critical problem facing California. Milton Friedman and George Stigler told that story in 1946. It is the story of every expensive housing market today: prices are signals, and when the rules jam the signal, the homes stop coming.

The Regulatory Tax

Separate what a home costs to build from what it sells for. By the mid-2010s a modest San Francisco home sold for about $800,000 and cost under $300,000 to produce, land included. Land and permission account for the difference, not lumber or labor. San Francisco is the extreme case; the same research finds prices near build cost where the rules are light, and the gap grows as the rules grow. Federal economists estimated in 2019 that rents in the most constrained cities could fall by roughly half if the rules came off.

What the home sold for
$800,000
What it cost to build
$300,000

Source: Glaeser and Gyourko, "The Economic Implications of Housing Supply," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2018. Measured in constant dollars, a square foot cost about the same to build in 2015 as in 1980 (the study's series runs through 2015).

Moscow Has Its Own Thicket

Every barrier in the national story has a Moscow instance, documented in the City's own records.

Parking mandates

Moscow requires 2 spaces per dwelling plus 1 per bedroom over 4, and Ordinance 2026-04 counts dens and offices as bedrooms for the parking calculation. The City's own July 6 council presentation showed the same building needing 4 spaces as a two-family home and 13 as multifamily. National research puts parking mandates at up to $50,000 of added cost per apartment.

Minimum lot sizes

Moscow's R-1 zone requires 9,600 square feet of lot, 80 feet of width, and 40 feet of street frontage before one home is allowed. Research finds that when cities double minimum lot sizes, prices rise about 14% and rents about 9%.

Where homes are illegal

Two-family homes are a permitted use in only two of Moscow's residential zones. In my August 2026 review of all 27 Idaho city zoning codes, read from the published code text, Moscow ranked 24th for housing permissiveness.

Delay

One Moscow building permit took 288 days from application to issuance. Every trade inspection then passed, and the building sat without a certificate of occupancy into the fall semester. Three duplex applications from another local builder sat pending for eight to nine months. Between July 27 and August 11, 2026, applicants withdrew eight residential building applications, at least fourteen homes among them, and as of late August 2026 no new multi-unit application had been filed since July 6. The filings do not state reasons. The dates are in the record.

More city records work

Fees

Development fees rose 5% in the FY2027 fee resolution. City fees are a named component of local build budgets. National averages run about $7,000 in permit fees and more than $16,000 in impact fees per home, and by one industry estimate more than 40% of the cost of an apartment building traces to regulation.

What Does Not Work

Every expensive market reaches for the same three answers. Here is the record on each.

Rent control

San Francisco expanded rent control in 1994. Landlords removed about 15% of the covered rental homes from the market, and citywide rents rose about 5%. Turnover among the protected tenants fell about 20%; everyone else paid more.

Government housing

The Soviet Union ran housing as a state monopoly. The result was the communal apartment, about 9 square meters of living space per person, and waits of 10 to 20 years in Moscow and Leningrad.

Subsidies without reform

Federal rental aid pays the gap between 30% of a tenant's income and a rent cap set from local market rents. When regulation pushes rent up a dollar, the taxpayer's bill rises a dollar. Washington spends more than $50 billion a year on rental aid, and only about one in four eligible families receives it. Deregulation would save an estimated $3.9 billion, enough to help 424,000 more families with no new spending.

The Six Changes

Cut parking minimums

Let builders and buyers decide how much parking a home needs. Parking is the most expensive empty space in Moscow.

Cut minimum lot sizes

Legalize starter homes on smaller lots. A family should not need 9,600 square feet of dirt before a home is legal.

Legalize middle housing

Allow duplexes, twin homes, and townhouses in the base residential zones, and repeal the definitional traps added by Ordinance 2026-04.

Put a clock on permits

Decisions in days, a published queue, and no silent holds. A permit that takes 288 days is a home that misses a year.

Publish the fee stack

Every dollar the city adds to a new home, published in one table, reviewed every budget year, and pushed down.

Compete for federal reform money

Apply for ROAD to Housing Act Innovation Fund grants, which are built to reward exactly these changes once Congress funds them.

Moscow Can Compete for Federal Money

On July 11, 2026, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became federal law. Its Innovation Fund authorizes $200 million a year in competitive grants for local governments that grow housing supply through zoning reform: smaller lot minimums, less required parking, fewer ADU restrictions, and streamlined permitting. That list describes Moscow's code today. The money flows once Congress appropriates it, and the cities that move first are first in line.

The City's Own Files

Under public records request 26-554, the City released 46 records on Ordinance 2026-04: the staff reports, the ordinance drafts, the presentations, the packet materials, the spreadsheet of plans staff reviewed, and every set of minutes. The City's portal marks the production as unpublished. It is posted here, file by file, with the City's own file names.

Read the 26-554 files · Community Development memoranda (26-598) · All records requests

Sources

Let Builders Build
National figures from the published research cited above. Moscow figures from City ordinances, minutes, fee resolutions, and permit records. Independent civic project. Not an official City of Moscow product. Verify against source documents before citing.
A self-funded project of John Slagboom, Moscow, Idaho.