The Housing Crisis Is the Everything Crisis

youtube.com

I haven't had the chance to watch the video but it seems increasingly realistic that there is no housing crisis. The actual crisis is much larger and far worse. Which hey, kind of would rather have a housing crisis.

It also is unclear what the fix is.

If cities had more housing, they would create more wealth and boost the economy. But they don't, so we're stuck in a broken cycle.

As an upstate NY person I wonder if the problem with California is that the weather is too nice.

People in California clearly don't want to build more housing for good reasons: where would they get the water? how could they afford to build other infrastructure to support the population?

California's population density is already higher than Germany and all but the most populated European countries. If you deleted the large areas that are uninhabitable, military reservations, etc. California is denser than the Netherlands and any country that isn't an anomaly like Singapore or the Gaza Strip.

The resources water etc are being used, but the cost to provide services is too high for single family detached homes. If they want to get out of their massive debt, they need to build up and stop building out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com