America, take note: New Zealand has figured out a simple way to bring down home prices

Imagine a bustling neighborhood with a mix of single-family homes, triplexes, apartment buildings, businesses, and public amenities. Rent growth is slow, home prices are reasonable, and there are plenty of affordable-housing options. Families, young people, retired folks, and businesses are all able to coexist, making the area diverse and vibrant.

Unfortunately, most American neighborhoods don't look like this. Instead, huge parts of the country have zoning laws that make it illegal to build anything other than a single-unit home. But these laws — originally designed to keep residential neighborhoods separate from manufacturing and to segregate and exclude people based on race — are running up against a harsh reality. American cities, especially those with growing job markets and a healthy influx of new residents, need to build millions of new homes to keep housing from becoming unaffordable. And keeping single-family-only zoning laws in place makes it almost impossible to meet these areas' housing needs (See full article here).