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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

There was a large drop in the price of housing just 15 years ago. Granted, other factors were involved, but that's part of what the article is about. It is possible.

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This is that heart to what the problem is. Instead of letting the housing market, collapse and state collapsed the federal reserve started printing money nonstop to inflate assets, including housing. And they haven’t stopped since then. This is what causes separation of wealth in the United States, and the increase in homelessness.

And now the Fed can’t even get the guts to lower inflation by raising interest rates because of what it’s done to the housing market.

When I go to city council meetings to support housing, the problem is NIMBYs. Not macroeconomic conditions, but ordinary people who show up at an evening meeting to complain about - I kid you not - some code removing a number for garage heights. They wanted to use this to block some apartments in their neighborhood.

This kind of thing happens over and over and over again, all across the US and it adds up.

I don't live in your city but in my city we just got finished pushing a project approval through a 7-year political process. The project will build 1000 new apartments on the parking lot of an existing subway station. Most of the new apartments will be deed-restricted affordable housing. At the most recent and final hearing there were still Boomers showing up to demand the project be scrapped because they prefer free parking.

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