Hacker News Reader

Building more houses is just like building roads. It increases demand for that housing. Higher population means more demand, which outstrips how fast you can build, which leads to higher prices.

There's your "somehow". Being intentionally obtuse just makes you look stupid at best.

View on HN

This is exactly right. The only way to lower housing prices is to start demolishing housing. The more apartments we convert to office space, the lower prices will go.

If we destroyed all houses, the cost of housing would be zero!

Weirdly, that kind of describes Detroit in the 2000's.

New subdivision next door, so I bought two houses to live in.

Roads are free at the point of use, so this analogy doesn't hold (and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find empirical evidence of what you're describing)

There's more housing in NY now than there was in the 1900s and house prices have only increased.

There's no more choice in using roads than there is to live somewhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com