Some observers look at such facts and conclude that the regulatory theory of housing costs was wrong, or at best badly incomplete, all along. “The movement to lift zoning restrictions is still new, but enough time has elapsed to begin to see how well it’s working, and the answer is … a little,” Paul Glastris and Nate Weisberg wrote in Washington Monthly last year. If that’s true, then the YIMBY activists pushing for zoning reforms around the country are making a terrible mistake, dooming themselves to repeating California’s failed experiment.