As bad as many think the housing situation is it is actually worse according to new piece by Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic.
- Enough Is Not Enough. It’s not just about having enough homes. It is also about having enough homes in the right places where people want to live. “To keep their housing costs in line with their income, millions of families do not live where they want to or in the kinds of homes they want to or with the people they want to.”
- Would It Matter? Yes, without question. ” Studies show that when builders construct units in a given place, it reduces rents and sale prices in nearby blocks, as well as in nearby neighborhoods; conversely, restricting construction drives prices up.”
- So Where Is The Public Pressure? A sad realty is “In one recent survey, just 30 to 40 percent of American adults said they believed that increasing the housing stock would slash prices and rents.” Why? Something called supply skepticism. “The laundromat closes. The soulless five-over-one condo building goes up. Black families leave and white couples flood in. And all the while, rents surge, making real-estate development look like an engine of gentrification rather than an engine of affordability.
Read the Full Piece at The Atlantic
P.S. Here is an insane stat. In a 2019 paper, economists found that if New York, San Jose, and San Francisco had the permitting standards of Atlanta or Chicago over the previous several decades, the U.S. economy would have been roughly $2 trillion bigger in 2009.
