Is there no solution to housing crisis?

[u/Comfortable-Wrap-493]

I feel like we are completely stuck.

I know the government can't just snap its fingers and force real estate prices to drop. Property is treated as a huge investment. It's not just the massive corporations and wealthy investors; even regular, lower-income people have their entire life savings tied up in the value of their homes. Crashing the market hurts them, too.

But if we don't find a solution, we are heading toward a future where only the rich will ever be able to afford buying land or a house.

Even renting is getting completely out of control. At the rate prices are increasing, soon only people with high-paying corporate jobs will be able to afford a basic apartment.

So what happens to everyone else? What about the working class, the people who actually sweat and break their backs to keep this country running? If the main workforce is priced out of both buying and renting, how does society even function? What about artistic jobs? What about creativity? Should all just join high paying collar jobs?

Does anyone see a realistic way out of this mess?

[u/NoDig3444]

The solution is extremely straightforward; just build more housing. Reform zoning laws, subsidize development, build public housing, whatever. Just build more. More supply will lower prices.

[u/HeloRising → u/NoDig3444]

The hole in that idea is that different areas have a carrying capacity and you can't just shove more housing in and solve everything.

Local infrastructure, roads, availability of work, and public transit all play a factor in how many people you can fit in a given area and in a lot of places we're kind of at the maximum without literally ripping everything apart and starting from scratch.

That works fine in Sim City but you can't do that in a living city.

The costs also very quickly add up where you don't just need to pay for building new housing but you need to pay to expand the power, water, and sewer for the area so the local utilities can handle the influx of new people. You need to think about things like parking and public transit, businesses to support people and places to work.

It really isn't as simple as "just build more housing."

I have family that lives in a city in Southern California and they're doing the "just build housing" thing and it's turning into a disaster because they can't out-build the demand for luxury housing which means the new housing is prohibitively expensive and they've out-built the ability for local utilities to supply power and water which has led to serious problems with water shortages and brownouts.

[u/NoDig3444 → u/HeloRising]

No, you can absolutely just shove more housing in. Infill development actually lowers demand for infrastructure, because it means that everything is closer together. Building houses next to jobs means people have to travel less. The electric grid and water supply have to be scaled no matter where you put the housing, it's easier to supply to city centers than to urban sprawl. Public transit lowers traffic demand. The SoCal brownouts are due to wildfires, not grid capacity issues.

[u/HeloRising → u/NoDig3444]

Infill development actually lowers demand for infrastructure, because it means that everything is closer together.

More people means more utility use.

Building houses next to jobs means people have to travel less.

In theory, yes, but the kinds of jobs that pay what living in these places tends to cost means that you're probably going to be commuting anyways.

The electric grid and water supply have to be scaled no matter where you put the housing, it's easier to supply to city centers than to urban sprawl.

It really isn't. Having to rip up heavily used streets and re-plumb and refit power cables to whole areas is not easy or cheap to do.

The SoCal brownouts are due to wildfires, not grid capacity issues.

In this city, they're having localized power delivery issues because of the strain that's been put on the local grid system as a result of building masses of new housing.

[u/NoDig3444 → u/HeloRising]

You have no idea what you're talking about.