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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

> Perhaps the increase in homelessness is because local NIMBYS efficevly ban new housing projects?

No. Housing projects lead to nothing but misery and more homelessness.

The increases are almost 100% drug-driven. Because of drugs, people are not _exiting_ homelessness (the average time of being homeless is growing, according to the 2-year counts).

The answers, counterintuitively, to strengthen the NIMBYs and make sure it's impossible to build ANYTHING in cities. Then promote the remote work and suburbs/rural areas via tax incentives.

The US has millions of square kilometers of perfectly good land available for housing. There's zero reason to try to cram people into the Human Cube ( https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-human-cube-the-volume-of-... ).

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>The US has millions of square kilometers of perfectly good land available for housing. There's zero reason to try to cram people into

Population density makes mass transit feasible.

And?

Suburbs are pyramid schemes that are already beginning to collapse. Infrastructure costs are unsustainably high without density and plenty of cities are going bankrupt when it comes time to replace sewers etc.

> Infrastructure costs are unsustainably high without density and plenty of cities are going bankrupt when it comes time to replace sewers etc.

It's funny that you mention infrastructure. Do you know that one mile of Manhattan subway now costs more than 1000 miles of modern 6-lane freeway?

Suburban infrastructure costs are in line with the _average_ urban costs (some cities like NYC or Seattle have _wildly_ inflated costs). Some costs are slightly more, some are less.

Clearly people want to move into cities. The increased prices of housing makes that beyond clear, to deny it is to deny basic economics. Thus why shouldn't we build housing where people show with their money that they want to live? Its worked in several US cities when tried, who have even seen housing prices go down while building very reasonable 3-6 story apartment buildings.

> make sure it's impossible to build ANYTHING in cities

this will do wonders to the rental market (and car usage and the climate)

>No. Housing projects lead to nothing but misery and more homelessness.

Now there's a hot take if I ever saw one.

Well, it’s an accurate statement, at least how it’s been historically done in the US.

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