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Comment by rmk | Hacker News Reader

Didn't Boise, ID have an influx of better-off people from the coasts during the Pandemic? If plenty of luxury housing is being built it was likely in response to that. Ultimately those houses will get rented or otherwise occupied, which should free up housing at the lower end.

Compare this to places in the Bay Area, where it's not practical to spread out any farther (no good public transport because of a dozen or more transit agencies that are always fighting and Caltrain, which is a hugely dysfunctional organization that can't even run trains at a piddling frequency). We have houses being blocked using CEQA and other nonsense, all because people who work in unproductive industries or not at all (non-tech, retirees) have decided to get more than their share by denying permits for new construction.

What's better? Some housing being built or none at all?

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> Didn't Boise, ID have an influx of better-off people from the coasts during the Pandemic?

Yup

> What's better? Some housing being built or none at all?

Loads of housing is getting built but what we've not seen is subsequent drops in housing prices (the opposite in fact). This speaks to problems beyond a housing shortage.

Who knows, maybe in 10 years that will reverse and the market will correct back to pre-pandemic levels. Doesn't look like it, however.

> Loads of housing is getting built

Googling around it looks like the population of Idaho has gone from around 1 million in 1990 to around 2.2 million today.

Total housing starts from 1988 to today are around 400k (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IDBPPRIVSA). So assuming that Idaho had "enough" housing in 1988, they've only built 1 unit of housing for every 3 new residents since 1990.

This doesn't seem like loads of housing to me.

USA is extremely behind on housing raw numbers by about 20 million homes based on population growth. We stopped building in 2008. Almost no homes were built that year. It took 10 years to ramp back up.

Just in the past 2-3 years started to build as many homes as we need but the rate will take 15-20 years to catch up assuming it stays at the current rate.

Basically if you're 40 now you will be 60 by the time it's okay again and that's if we even keep the current build rate for that long.

> Loads of housing is getting built but what we've not seen is subsequent drops in housing prices (the opposite in fact). This speaks to problems beyond a housing shortage.

No it doesn't. The only thing that would indicate a problem beyond a shortage would be if total supply was greater than and increasing greater than total demand. Building "loads" doesn't bear any of that data.

> Loads of housing is getting built