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I don't mean to take any stance on whether it's the singular outlier in magnitude, but https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/04/the-global-housing-cr... makes a strong case for it being broader than a West Coast issue.

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It's an interesting article but it doesn't really support the lede (that housing is problematic in Detroit) with evidence. It'd be interesting to cross the median multiple metric for American cities with economic growth, to see the extent to which housing is locking people out of access to opportunity.

It would to me be weird to see an argument that there is a housing shortage problem in Chicago, which has a pretty reasonable median home price, and where the median home is within a much more reasonable commute to the city center than most SFBA homes.

I assume (without evidence!) that this is true throughout the midwest and throughout the 2nd tier of US cities.

It's a problem in many cities around the world that are experiencing housing price shocks. A list of some of these cities: Vancouver, London, Toronto, SF, LA, NYC, Seattle, Berlin, Austin, Boulder, Sydney, Auckland.

And the housing contagion spreads. For example most of the province of BC that Vancouver has similar housing affordability issues. Same with Toronto and many hours away from it. About %70 of the Canadian population lives somewhere heavily unaffordable.

Then you add the problem that most jobs are in these cities and it makes it even worse.

EDIT:

Look at this list of unaffordable metros for example: http://time.com/money/4193804/hong-kong-least-affordable-cit...

The US stands out as having a good collection of affordable metros, the but rest of the world is worse and california is horrible.

Ok, but those US cities are only something like 16% of the US urban population in cities over 100,000 residents.

I was pointing out that it's an international problem not just the USA. Thus making it more of a generational issue.

But the point is that it's not a problem in most of the US, which makes it an issue only for people that demand to live in a few select cities.

I don't know about the US, but my experience from Europe is that many smaller cities have become, at least relatively, unaffordable as well. It seems like almost anywhere with decent density and transportation has now become part of the global credit, property and holiday rental market.

I don't know about those other cities but both Vancouver and now recently Toronto, have rent control.

Yes, real estate prices are heavily inflated but you can rent for a decent price in both of those metropolitan areas. I would find it very difficult to believe 70% of the population around the GTA can not afford to live where they are.

Rent control isn't the solution to everything. If housing is consistently available at a discount to market price, it will fill up and stay full. New entrants to the housing market, such as the younger generation, are still screwed.

It could work if the city is constantly building enough new housing -- but if the city has the will to allow that, they wouldn't have needed rent control.

Rent control isn't a solution at all. It's just a lottery to pay for some people lucky enough to get it.

Not if there isn't significantly more demand that supply. Rent control has worked well to mitigate housing issues in Paris during the last few years. It didn't solve everyone's problems: more and more students are moving to the close suburbs, and getting an apartment can be highly dependant on whether your landlord deems your income stable enough. But it has also prevented rent escalation - which we're currently seeing now that a court has repealed rent control [1].

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2017/11/28/apres-lil...

The problem is it works in the short term, but makes the problem much worse in the long term. It reduces the returns of future apartments, so fewer apartments are built.

> Vancouver, London, Toronto, SF, LA, NYC, Seattle, Berlin, Austin, Boulder, Sydney, Auckland.

Fortunately there are tens of millions of other metros to live in

I don't think there are quite that many. 7billion/20million (smallest plural 10 of million) get's us 350 people per "metro" this is assuming no one on the planet lives rurally (about half do). There is perhaps thousands of metros on the planet.

On a more serious note, realistically this number is much smaller for each person. After you take into account the ones you could legally live in, ones you can speak the language for, ones with good job prospects. A person in the USA is lucky to have tens of options. For people in smaller countries the options are likely to be under a dozen.

There are studies like this one [0] that argue just about the entire increase in inequality in the past few decards (in Piketty's "r > g" sense) can be explained by increases in the housing market.

It's interesting to hear Chicago doesn't have a housing shortage though, having pretty much all my roots and social ties in coastal cities it does feel to me like this problem is everywhere.

[0] https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/deciphering-the-fall...

I bought a 3-bed, 1-bath, 900-sqft bungalow in a solidly working-class St. Louis neighborhood in 2016 for $72k. I rented a nice 1100-sqft 1-bedroom in a nearby neighborhood for $625/mo a couple years before that. (Rents have not meaningfully changed in those neighborhoods).

I now rent a run-down, 350-sqft apartment in NYC for $2k/mo.

People on the coasts seem wildly out of touch with the housing situation in the Midwest. Cheap housing is the norm. It's simply not a problem in most of the country.

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