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betaby

The USA have added about 2 million people the last year.

That about the size of Houston, TX.

The USA are not building at the rate one city of Houston per year.

Source https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population...

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I was under the impression it was more of a distribution problem than a quantity problem? This chart suggests we're building on the order of 1.5 million units of housing per year, which (unless all of those people are occupying a single unit each) should be sufficient in aggregate to keep up with population growth: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ETOTALUSQ176N

But people are moving to the cities, which is exactly where we're not building.

Build one city of Houston where? That's the issue. There are plenty of empty housings, the problem is it's not where people want/need to live.

That's just a comparison to understand the amount of new housing needed per year. Every year.

But it's not "the amount of new housing needed". Housing exists, empty or affordable, just not where it's needed.

Where it's needed you either can't physically build it, or of you can, then it just further blows up the prices.

This is a situation where beatings will continue until morale improves.

There is near infinite room for housing. As long as people keep living in and moving to expensive cities, jobs will continue to concentrate there.

Companies follow the talent, and talent follows the companies. The feedback will continue until one party blinks.

You forgot the third party, zoning laws. The rational outcome for the two parties you describe is for height limits to be removed and extremely dense infrastructure to be built out. It's entirely a policy failure.

Right. The supply isn't increasing where demand exists.

This is probably an ignorant question, but what's stopping states in the US from developing new planned cities? I can see myself moving to a place that's somewhat remote, if I had good reason to believe that I'm getting in on the ground floor of a new >1M population city with public transport planned from the get-go.

... the only problem is that I don't actually see myself believing such a promise, especially given the current disdain for public investments.

It's a good question. I think the answer is that demand is where job opportunities are, and that is extremely hard to create. Because it's sort of the end goal of the system in some aspect. In other words, everyone wants to get rich, there is no formula.

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