Supply-centric arguments are commonly dismissed out of hand, yet research shows building expensive new homes results in lower prices at the other end of the market
For whatever reason, people want it to be more complicated than “2463 households need 2463 houses”. I mean, at the nitty-gritty level it is, but at scale that’s the sort of complexity that cancels itself out if you just leave it alone enough, as all the Western countries do last I checked.
You see a weird sort of symbiosis between affluent NIMBYs and some of the less sophisticated antipoverty activists, sometimes. In a housing crisis, would it be better to build small apartments rather than luxury apartments, given a fixed square footage? Yes. Are luxury apartments still houses? Also yes. Both groups want to ignore the second bit, but for completely opposite reasons relative to the first bit. Sometimes, they work together and manage to get no houses built at all.
Which would you prefer- a now dated but once luxury apartment, or a newly built basic apartment? The older apartment is likely to have a lot more living space and those luxury features mostly still work.
affordable housing too often is hate on the poor having nice things.
For whatever reason, people want it to be more complicated than “2463 households need 2463 houses”. I mean, at the nitty-gritty level it is, but at scale that’s the sort of complexity that cancels itself out if you just leave it alone enough, as all the Western countries do last I checked.
You see a weird sort of symbiosis between affluent NIMBYs and some of the less sophisticated antipoverty activists, sometimes. In a housing crisis, would it be better to build small apartments rather than luxury apartments, given a fixed square footage? Yes. Are luxury apartments still houses? Also yes. Both groups want to ignore the second bit, but for completely opposite reasons relative to the first bit. Sometimes, they work together and manage to get no houses built at all.
Which would you prefer- a now dated but once luxury apartment, or a newly built basic apartment? The older apartment is likely to have a lot more living space and those luxury features mostly still work.
affordable housing too often is hate on the poor having nice things.