>Frankly I'm surprised the effect was so small
It's not over yet! And won't be for a long time. There are a lot of people just scrapping by right now. All it will take is one big financial hit to knock them down into true poverty.
It's not over yet! And won't be for a long time. There are a lot of people just scrapping by right now. All it will take is one big financial hit to knock them down into true poverty.
In reality, there are a lot more people than this who are just on the edge of scraping by. Some of their own volition (some people on the edge make $200k+ and it's because of a series of poor decisions), but even more people because the poverty line doesn't even pay for their studio apartment (I see you, California!), much less food or anything else.
However there are also less obvious results given the time domain involved. The problems have followed those retiring out of California's market as other regions follow in the same footsteps.
As an example; the greater Seattle / Puget Sound metro area reached a combination of sprawl / urban growth boundary / natural features (mountains, lakes, the sound) at about the same time that the 2008 recession killed what little development was still occurring.
The price of a very cramped, noisy (poor insulation) apartment in the city without even a parking spot to store the vehicle for anything you're doing outside of the city (E.G. visiting family on a weekend, going hiking, etc) was easily at least 3K (offhand, the last time I looked), and similar units in the suburbs quite far out, if available, were about 1.5K per month.
There might be more rural areas, but those were excluded from my search as the last time I looked they failed even the FCC's definition of broadband (25mbit down, 3mbit up). I suspect any areas out that far with good Internet would still have bad prices.
Failure, yes. Market, no. Local governments will point guns at you if you try to build more housing.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about.