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Comment by amanaplanacanal | Hacker News Reader

In a properly functioning market, new supply would be built when there is new demand. Perhaps they should try to figure out why that isn't happening.

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Housing suffers from being based on a naturally scarce resource land. Markets drive prices higher but new land cannot be created

If only builders could figure out some way to consolidate multiple living units under single roof, with shared building systems. Maybe something in the vertical dimension?

Oh no, but this might mean a hideous three-flat on my otherwise perfect block of identical white-picket-fences! Or God forbid, a duplex

And you know what kind of people live in apartments...

(That being me and most every other person in my neighborhood lol; we're all such animals, us apartment-dwellers, i can see why people would hate having young families, retired couples, and single professionals living on their street! We're a constant stream of boring mediocrity!)

Sarcasm aside: the best neighborhoods are always where there's a mix of housing and easy access to entertainment and chores. The suburbs i grew up in don't make the cut, but every neighborhood I've inhabited since--from college town "city centers" to quiet corners of the north side of Chicago--this is the common factor. Whether i was in a house, an apartment, a duplex, whatever, the good ones are where there's a real mix of housing stock, incomes, family situations, etc and you can get to a grocery store, pharmacy, doctor, or whatever in under 10 minutes, bonus points for being open at night. Visiting family in American exurbs is a major exercise in patience and planning (and driving)

That would violate many local zoning laws. NIMBY!

There is plenty of land for housing already. It is just constrained by zoning.

I think housing isn't an ordinary durable good the way economists think. If there was a shortage of toasters you couldn't make money by churning toasters like you can if there is a shortage of housing. But you could make money importing toasters. With housing when there is a shortage the effective way to make money is by using access to cheap credit to bid prices higher.

So a housing price spiral is a result of a properly functioning market.

In the USA, lots of housing construction is done by illegal immigrants--it's hard to get people to put on roofs of sheetrock in 37⁰C weather if they have alternatives.

In the latest migration, a fair number were given government support and consumed housing instead of building it.

And yes, the immigration policy of the US is self-destructive. For some reason, the responses seem to ignore the complexity....

Pretty much the whole developed world is suffering excessive housing prices.

Whoever has the money to develop housing is in a position to exploit the scarcity as well.

If only they could develop housing! The issue is zoning creating the scarcity.

as in most matters of public controversy, both things are true.

In Australia something similar happened with legal immigration going wild. Obviously there are issues of regulations and NIMBYsm which are far worst than in the US but also because construction unions opposed visas for construction workers, so there is a shortage while all kind of people with unnecessary jobs streamed into the country. The squeeze is from both sides of the political spectrum, asset holding class benefit from it financially and the left benefit from it electoraly by creating poverty and state dependency. No wonder extreme political groups from both ends of the political sides are gaining traction. Those politician betrayed the middle class and working class.

I know it’s good for Blue Team redistricting, but I think we need to seriously reconsider the viability of moving every human on earth to 5 metro areas in the US.

People want to take care of their families, and they go where the jobs are. This has been happening for hundreds of years now, I don't know if it's possible to turn it around.

Well it's those large metro areas that roll out the red carpet for them (assistance programs and sanctuary status), so I see no problem with it.

Higher-level governments elected by the electorate of a larger region are trying hard to make it explicitly illegal for those metro areas to do those things.

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