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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

Home building is rampant in some areas, it's just not in the insanely VHCOL coasts.

Tax incentives or other reasons to have companies offer jobs in places like Milwaukee or Boise reduces housing pressure on the big cities.

What we used to have is smaller (in area) cities, who were not governed in lock-step, and if housing was needed, entire new cities would pop up (sometimes called suburbs, but check them - often they're their own legal entity).

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Studies have found if you JUST upzoned and deregulated SF & NYC 30 years the avg income across the country would be %25 - %35 richer today.

building out the VHCOL cities is the fastest path to high growth and social mobility. These are far and away the country's most productive places (even for low skilled work) and build up, reducing housing cost, and bringing in migrants and making them more productive turbocharges growth.

I live in a VHCOL coast (the Bay Area) and am trying to add onto my house. Contractors are quoting broadly between $500-$1000 per square feet for an addition, for an ADU, or for a new house. We need both YIMBY procedure reforms and also somehow to bring down construction costs. I’m hopeful prefab/modular can help.

A big part of that is contractors have to pay Bay Area costs to operate. Other parts of the country $1000 a square is strictly "brand new really nice mansion" territory.

There's so much demand for housing and construction in the Bay Area, that with the stroke of a pen (figuratively), you could increase building activity by 100x. That would create a huge price spike at first, but construction businesses would expand and others would move to the area, more housing would be available for workers outside of the highest income bands, which would increase supply. It would be a virtuous cycle that could continue for quite a while.

We used to have completely different technologies in the world. For better or worse the modern economy depends much more on agglomeration and cities are more important than ever. Work from home didn't change this as some people thought it would.

We need to unlock our economic centers if we want to survive.

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