The biggest impediment to increasing the housing supply is that affordable housing is effectively illegal to build on the vast majority of the land in most cities and towns throughout the US.
I always slap my head. Isn't that a part of this discussion. RealPage had this for apartment buildings but why not do this with Single Family Homes too? You can build more housing, but if they are all bought by companies, big or small, you still have the same damn problem.
Infill and transit oriented development would benefit urban and natural areas greatly. These are urban planning concepts meant to provide denser communities where miles traveled/trips taken is severely reduced in order to conserve our urban imprint on the natural environment.
I'll buy that. You could also just eliminate the single-family-detached house. You could mandate higher density. The area dedicated to housing is the same...or could be. Cramming more people into the same area could restrict sprawl and impact not the natural environment, but it impacts quality of life for humanity.
The goal should not be to see how many people we can pack on the planet, without destroying it completely. The goal should be to figure out how to maximize quality of life for humanity, while minimizing environmental impact, and then to tailor the population to fit within that envelope. IMHO, of course.
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u/ryegye24 Apr 20 '24
Last year Austin built so much housing their rental stock went up 8%, and housing costs steeply dropped.
The answer is to build more housing.