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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

That was before the major housing shortage. The US is short about 6M homes by some measure [2], and the Bay Area is short a staggering quantity all by itself, so much so it has its own Wikipedia article. This remains the fault of onerous zoning rules and NIMBYs. [1]

[edit] No supply + high demand = prices go up. Higher interest rates only help at the margins because it doesn't actually change the demand factor which is that the humans in America need a place to live, and the more they make, the more they can afford to pay. And it certainly doesn't change the supply factor!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/america-is-short-more-than-5...

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FWIW in my East Bay neighborhood, I'm noticing in the last couple months it's taking closer to a week (rather than a day or 2) for "Coming Soon" real estate signs to change to "Sale Pending".

The most popular city, according to Zillow, is Prairie Village, KS.

https://www.zillow.com/research/most-popular-city-2022-31925...

This is about 1 mile from where I live in Overland Park, KS. PV is all single family homes with near zero apartments. Of course the city is trying to re-zone to put in higher density housing, and the population is vehemently opposed to it; I don't blame them. People move there for that reason. Higher density leads to more crime and other frustrations. People learned their lesson from the pandemic.

Why would higher population density lead to higher crime rates? Do you have a source for that?

Poverty and general desperation leads to higher crime rates as people resort illegal means to get by. And that's what happens when there is not enough housing for people.

In the United States, we have a whole bunch of terrible housing policies, so maybe people are conflating density for poverty. But you can find many examples across Europe and Asia where there is little correlation between density and crime.

It makes a kind of intuitive sense. If a certain % of human interactions are crime, and you create circumstances where there are more interactions (packed night club, large convention, dense city, etc), you could expect more of all kinds of interactions including crime. Whether that's how it works in reality is another question.

See this is exactly what I'm talking about.

- "I want affordable housing!"

- "Hm, ok, how about we build new houses in the places people want to live, increasing supply to meet demand"

- "NOT LIKE THAT"

It's just like the "no take only throw" dog meme.

If you don't want to live next to other people, buy the land around you. If you can't afford the land around you, move further away. There's no reason your tastes should dictate what I can do with my property. I'm sorry, I thought this was America.

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