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teakettle42

> deliberately causing a shortage of a basic need

There’s no housing shortage.

There’s a limited supply in highly desirable locations because they’re highly desirable.

People can and do live elsewhere, working local jobs or commuting.

> The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas

That’s just one of many problems of scale; the solution is not to keep scaling up.

> … the home-owning class constrains the supply of housing and drives up the price of their own assets.

Nobody is obligated to destroy their own community to accommodate the interests of rent-seeking land developers and people who don’t live there.

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Just to address this from a non US standpoint. While I'm sympathetic toward both the desire to preserve the character and community of a neighbourhood and your antipathy towards rentiers - there absolutely is a housing crisis across Europe (and presumably in the US).

Part of the reason is the lack of social housing provision, with most EU governments reducing or all together abandoning their post war commitments to low cost housing.

Another reason is that, even in this era of remote work, the enormous majority of high paying jobs do require living in a large population centre.

Perhaps the largest reason is the financialisation of housing as an asset class by hedge and other vulture funds. Italy alone seems to have kept the housing crisis / shortage localised to wealthy cities - and it is the only wealthy EU country to have done so. Germany, Ireland, France etc, all have rents and housing costs far higher than their median citizens capacity to comfortably pay, even in very remote and economically depressed areas.

Italy by contrast charges high taxes on 2nd and 3rd properties, effectively blocking the aggregation of empty / underused housing stock. Which has resulted in rural areas and less populous cities being reasonably priced to live in. This is not the case anywhere else in Western Europe.

According to this website [0], the US has the 3rd lowest income/house price ratio in the entire world.

Outside the west coast and parts of the northeast which are geographically limited in building new houses, we basically have infinite land to build housing which is why inflation adjusted price per square foot hasn't really changed in decades [1].

[0]: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count...

[1]: https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/

Italy by contrast charges high taxes on 2nd and 3rd properties, effectively blocking the aggregation of empty / underused housing stock.

This is a great policy. Owning land you don't live on is perversity on the scale of deciding a patch of ocean is yours and shooting at any boat that crosses it.

>>Perhaps the largest reason is the financialisation of housing as an asset class by hedge and other vulture funds.

Financialization of housing has had no negative impact on housing affordability in regions of the US, mostly in the South, that allow housing supply to grow, instead of constricting it with zoning restrictions. On the contrary, basic economic theory would dictate that more advanced financial markets that facilitate greater volumes of investment into housing would be good for housing affordability, by expanding housing supply, and by doing so, increase the number of units available for rent relative to people looking to rent.

Consider which city has the highest rental rates in the world: San Francisco. It has the most stringent restrictions on housing development, and housing use by owners, of any city in North America.

Inhibiting the market is what creates shortages, and housing is no exception.

We want housing to be commodified, and mass-produced by collections of profit-motivated individuals. Consider: construction has kept rent in Chongqing, China to $75 a month.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/chongqing-chin...

Yes, the solution is to keep scaling up.

_No_ economy can _sustain_ American style suburban growth.

Read about 'the growth ponzi scheme' [1] or watch a video

https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

https://youtu.be/y_SXXTBypIg

The limited supply is due mostly to regulations and bureaucratic hurdles. Many cities have introduced lengthy approval processes for new developments, laws setting aside large areas for open space, and restrictive zoning policies. All of these kinds of rules prevent and delay new development.

Cities and states have no obligation to set urban policy in a way that is favorable to home owners -- a minority in most urban centers -- while frustrating the major economic benefit of cities. Growth and scale is what makes those places cool and what drives many of the benefits -- variety of restaurants, quality of goods, and so on -- that make them worth visiting and make them attractive to those who live in them. It is what makes them of value to the state and country. The idea that urban homeowners should be able to put brakes on the process is nuts; people who chose to own homes in significant or up-and-coming urban centers knew what they were getting into. It is just people trying to pull the ladder up after themselves, and this is not in the interest of most urban residents, of most people in any state, or of most people in the country. One does not have a "property right" to "the community just as it was when I got here".

> There’s a limited supply in highly desirable locations because they’re highly desirable.

That's literally what a shortage is. This is like saying, "there's no shortage of chips, people just need to buy less electronics."

> Nobody is obligated to destroy their own community to accommodate the interests of rent-seeking land developers and people who don’t live there.

The real rent-seeking behavior is curbing the supply of housing to drive up one's property values. "Rent-seeking behavior" is not very aptly named. A developer that builds a high rise apartment that rents to dozens of households is improving the use of land and expanding housing availability. A homeowner that keeps shooting down development proposals is not improving housing availability. The latter is the real rent-seeking behavior.

> That's literally what a shortage is. This is like saying, "there's no shortage of chips, people just need to buy less electronics."

Not being able to buy a $100k car doesn’t mean there’s a car shortage, and not being able to buy a home in Boulder doesn’t mean there’s a housing shortage.

There’s plenty of housing.

Folks aren’t homeless for lack of affordable housing.

> The latter is the real rent-seeking behavior.

The propaganda coup of real-estate investors is astounding.

They have people like you advocating for their ability to extract rent in perpetuity as if it was a moral imperative.

Meanwhile, you think the individuals that own a home and enjoy being a part of their community are the bad actors.

It’s truly amazing what they’ve managed to convince people like you of.

You can do whatever you want with your own home. But when you start criminalizing the victimless act of building a bigger house, that is where a line is crossed.

> Not being able to buy a $100k car doesn’t mean there’s a car shortage, and not being able to buy a home in Boulder doesn’t mean there’s a housing shortage.

It means there's a housing shortage in Boulder. The car analogy is not effective because a Camry does the exact same thing as a BMW. But a house in Oklahoma doesn't help you if your job is in Boulder.

>There’s no housing shortage. There’s a limited supply in highly desirable locations because they’re highly desirable.

Actually, it is very easy to have enough housing for everyone and yet make it impossible for everyone who could live in that area to actually live there.

https://youtu.be/724ZR1Za9BU

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