Someone Explain This So Called Housing Crisis?

[Orgasmo]

China and Wall Street are buying up entire blocks by the bulk which is making it impossible for regular people to afford a house anymore

That's off the mark. Purchase from foreign nationals have dropped off dramatically since the implementationof the foreign buyer tax. Now it's pure demand from large number of immigrants, primarily from India.

1.3 million immigrants of various type enter Canada last year. Only 220K new housing units were built. You do the math.

 

[avenue94]

That's true but I don't fundamentally think its the core problem, at worst its a periphery one to the fact that we have low housing supply. I don't think it matters if we have corporate landlords if the market is able to respond to demand more effectively and I don't think having a non-corporate landlord is much of an advantage if supply is constricted.

The other angle is that corporate monopolies are a very real thing in local markets, even if there isn't much that can be done about it.

 

[panamaican]

We have low housing supply in the major metro areas which are the engines of the economy. Yeah of course you can go buy a home in West Virginia but as you yourself said that's a small consolation.

I don't think its the case that we have enough rental units. In the dense downtown cores there are lots of apartments but most metro areas have zoned most of their residential land for R1 zoning which means the supply of housing is artificially constrained. On average about 75% of residential land is zoned for R1 and in some cities like San Jose its as high as 93%(unsurprisingly San Jose also some of, if not the, highest housing costs in the nation).

Allowing diverse kinds of dense, multifamily housing units to be built in the suburbs of these major metro areas that are currently exclusively zoned for SFHs will allow the market to add more units and thus to accommodate more people across various price points. That its illegal to do so is to me the core problem.

In those areas that are primarily zoned single family, the problem is that you can't find something to buy. Not that you can't find somewhere to rent. Now if your talking about affordable homes to buy or to rent, again that's not because people aren't building new homes or new buildings. It's that there's no incentive to build affordable units in high desire areas. The whole point of building in a high desire area is that you can elevate the prices and your margins. If you're going to build an apartment building in a high desire area, you're going to build luxury units.

Why? Because there's no shortage of people who can afford them. You don't have to build low income to avoid vacancies.

"Allowing diverse kinds of dense, multifamily housing units to be built in the suburbs..." misses the point. The problem is that many people don't want dense, multi-family housing in the suburbs. They move to the suburbs because they want single family homes. Building more of what people don't want doesn't fix your housing problem, it just wastes money.

It is a profit margin conversation. Where do people want to live? Near their work or near good schools for their kids. Do people prefer single family homes or do they want to live in apartment buildings? Young professionals like apartment buildings more than older people with families. But young professionals are not as well positioned to buy a home than older people with families. That means that your buying market is primarily comprised of established professionals who are moving into the family building stage of their lives. Developers understand this -- it makes more sense to build a single family home with great margins and sell it unless they want to also take on the long term headache of managing a property with constant tenant turnover. And the flip side is to build luxury apartments for young professionals who are still going out and living that fast life but have the income to afford a better quality space.

I do a decent amount of landlord/tenant work so I've found myself looking into the rental markets more than usual. There are plenty of low income spaces to rent in most cities. The neighborhoods suck, the amenities are non-existent. But those landlords will take almost anyone with a job. The rental housing is there. But the people in the buying market aren't.

When someone says "We should just build more apartment buildings," I often wonder who they think prefers to buy those premises over single family homes? And this matters because the housing crisis is almost exclusively discussed in the context of home buyers, not renters.

 

[panamaican]

That's off the mark. Purchase from foreign nationals have dropped off dramatically since the implementationof the foreign buyer tax. Now it's pure demand from large number of immigrants, primarily from India.

1.3 million immigrants of various type enter Canada last year. Only 220K new housing units were built. You do the math.

I'm not doubting the numbers. But how many people died? Of the 1.3 million immigrants, what was the average family size? And of the 220k new housing units what type of units were they, meaning what percentage were 1 bedrooms, 2 bedrooms, 4 bedrooms?

Because, while the discrepancy is obvious, the scale is less so. If those 1.3 million immigrants are in families that average 4 members per family, you only need 300k new units to house them, not 1.3 million new units. But if the new units are studio apartments, they obviously aren't viable for families with 3+ people.

again, not questioning the shortage of housing units but I'm looking for a better presentation of the housing mismatch.

 

[Islam Imamate]

I think that's just a good incidental excuse to push for more developments that are large and expensive. But the money and political clout is on the side of the developers. It makes more sense to me that they would win over a population with grandiose visions of "more homes" and "better economy" with their political contributions fueling agreement of legislators. I mean let's not forget how many actual laws are written by lobbying groups and how many politicians dont even know what's in those texts they're calling for votes for. That's likely to be worse on the local level as people are less politically savvy there.

In the threads about water shortages I often post that situation in that Arizona community the Rio Verde Foothills. That happened because of collusion between a large developer and local politicians. The developers wanted to erect a planned community in the middle of the desert but ran into the problem of there not being a sufficient sustainable water source. The laws in AZ require something other than groundwater to be used as a source, because its unstable. The developers lobbied for that law to be changed. Ipso facto, the entire community ended up with no water, most of whom spent their life savings on very large beautiful homes there, in an unincorporated town (that was a selling point), and no water.

That's not generally what we see though, we see homeowners are generally against new developments regardless of which of the three types of developers are trying to build. I ran into a NIMBY a few months ago and she flat out said she wanted no more construction at all of any kind in her area. As you can see ITTNIMBYs are against apartment buildings and muliplexes and ADUs and anything in between.

In those areas that are primarily zoned single family, the problem is that you can't find something to buy. Not that you can't find somewhere to rent. Now if your talking about affordable homes to buy or to rent, again that's not because people aren't building new homes or new buildings. It's that there's no incentive to build affordable units in high desire areas. The whole point of building in a high desire area is that you can elevate the prices and your margins. If you're going to build an apartment building in a high desire area, you're going to build luxury units.

Why? Because there's no shortage of people who can afford them. You don't have to build low income to avoid vacancies.

"Allowing diverse kinds of dense, multifamily housing units to be built in the suburbs..." misses the point. The problem is that many people don't want dense, multi-family housing in the suburbs. They move to the suburbs because they want single family homes. Building more of what people don't want doesn't fix your housing problem, it just wastes money.

It is a profit margin conversation. Where do people want to live? Near their work or near good schools for their kids. Do people prefer single family homes or do they want to live in apartment buildings? Young professionals like apartment buildings more than older people with families. But young professionals are not as well positioned to buy a home than older people with families. That means that your buying market is primarily comprised of established professionals who are moving into the family building stage of their lives. Developers understand this -- it makes more sense to build a single family home with great margins and sell it unless they want to also take on the long term headache of managing a property with constant tenant turnover. And the flip side is to build luxury apartments for young professionals who are still going out and living that fast life but have the income to afford a better quality space.

I do a decent amount of landlord/tenant work so I've found myself looking into the rental markets more than usual. There are plenty of low income spaces to rent in most cities. The neighborhoods suck, the amenities are non-existent. But those landlords will take almost anyone with a job. The rental housing is there. But the people in the buying market aren't.

When someone says "We should just build more apartment buildings," I often wonder who they think prefers to buy those premises over single family homes? And this matters because the housing crisis is almost exclusively discussed in the context of home buyers, not renters.

The crisis is not just with homebuyers, its also with renters as rents in the major metro areas have risen a lot. We're seeing that a building boom in some states is slowly bringing rents down but rent remains high in many major metro areas.

Of course people want single family homes which is why they will always be built and bought, I don't think we need to ban other types of homes in suburbs which is the status quo in most cities. Let the market decide by deregulating and cutting red tape. To be clear here when I mention multifamily homes that doesn't necessarily mean apartment buildings, to frame this as a conversation between only apartment buildings and SFHs is a false dichotomy. I don't think its reasonable to build a 15 floor apartment building in the middle of an R1 suburb but there can and should be space made for medium density homes like accessory dwelling units and multiplexes. Allowing these things is also a good way for homeowners to increase their property values by adding units to their property. Instead of simply sitting on a SFH and waiting for it to appreciate one could renovate it into a duplex and add an ADU in the backyard which triples the number of units on the lot making it more valuable to rent or sell.

If anything there's an excess supply of SFH. The average household size is shrinking with more and more SFHs being occupied by empty nest parents who don't want to sell because of high interest rates. Allowing them to add units would mean they could continue to live on the property while renting out the other units. Some older folks will build an ADU and move into that while renting out the primary dwelling. Others add units to accommodate a multigenerational household. I see no reason why these things should be illegal or excessively impeded by red tape and I think that allowing them gives both property owners and renters more options. Not everyone who wants or needs to rent necessarily wants to live in the heart of the city and homeowners having more flexibility to invest in their own property would allow the housing market to expand into different niches that are currently underserved.

 

[Andy Capp]

Again, just got to chuckle and say, did TS ever return to his own thread? Like even once?

 

[Sinister]

That's not generally what we see though, we see homeowners are generally against new developments regardless of which of the three types of developers are trying to build. I ran into a NIMBY a few months ago and she flat out said she wanted no more construction at all of any kind in her area. As you can see ITTNIMBYs are against apartment buildings and muliplexes and ADUs and anything in between.

The crisis is not just with homebuyers, its also with renters as rents in the major metro areas have risen a lot. We're seeing that a building boom in some states is slowly bringing rents down but rent remains high in many major metro areas.

Of course people want single family homes which is why they will always be built and bought, I don't think we need to ban other types of homes in suburbs which is the status quo in most cities. Let the market decide by deregulating and cutting red tape. To be clear here when I mention multifamily homes that doesn't necessarily mean apartment buildings, to frame this as a conversation between only apartment buildings and SFHs is a false dichotomy. I don't think its reasonable to build a 15 floor apartment building in the middle of an R1 suburb but there can and should be space made for medium density homes like accessory dwelling units and multiplexes. Allowing these things is also a good way for homeowners to increase their property values by adding units to their property. Instead of simply sitting on a SFH and waiting for it to appreciate one could renovate it into a duplex and add an ADU in the backyard which triples the number of units on the lot making it more valuable to rent or sell.

If anything there's an excess supply of SFH. The average household size is shrinking with more and more SFHs being occupied by empty nest parents who don't want to sell because of high interest rates. Allowing them to add units would mean they could continue to live on the property while renting out the other units. Some older folks will build an ADU and move into that while renting out the primary dwelling. Others add units to accommodate a multigenerational household. I see no reason why these things should be illegal or excessively impeded by red tape and I think that allowing them gives both property owners and renters more options. Not everyone who wants or needs to rent necessarily wants to live in the heart of the city and homeowners having more flexibility to invest in their own property would allow the housing market to expand into different niches that are currently underserved.

Of course the NIMBY problem is going to be more visible, because tracking who influences politicians via campaign contributions and donations, and who is helping write their legislation is trickier. I'm not saying those types of people aren't a problem, they have been since the concept of suburban life became a thing, but it's also become profitable for the largest most influential developers to perpetuate this and only want to build the types of housing that make them the most money. The smaller developers who would like to build more of what we need are locked out from that avenue as well, and in all of this no one actually gives a f*ck about fixing the homeless problem short of criminalizing people existing outside.

 

[blackheart]

That's true but I don't fundamentally think its the core problem, at worst its a periphery one to the fact that we have low housing supply. I don't think it matters if we have corporate landlords if the market is able to respond to demand more effectively and I don't think having a non-corporate landlord is much of an advantage if supply is constricted.

Whether you have corporate landlords owning all the housing, or whether you have a landlord class of upper class and upper-middle class private individuals owning all the housing, both are incentivized to keep supply low in order to maintain and grow existing home values.

You have to either decommodify housing entirely and completely stop subjecting it to market forces, where the only property you can own is personal property. Or, keep housing as a commodity but have a gigantic, well-funded nationwide federal government housing effort that sees the feds acting as the nation's largest housing contractor that builds millions of homes. This both fills the hole in the housing supply created by current market dynamics and it forces them to compete with the federal housing contractor so they start increasing supply as well.

Either way, it is insane and immoral to subject the most fundamental of human needs to pure market forces. It either needs to be shielded from market forces entirely, or at least to a significant degree.

 

[Jack V Savage]

That's true but I don't fundamentally think its the core problem, at worst its a periphery one to the fact that we have low housing supply. I don't think it matters if we have corporate landlords if the market is able to respond to demand more effectively and I don't think having a non-corporate landlord is much of an advantage if supply is constricted.

Yeah, it's not like corporate buyers are just sitting on vacant properties. If you read their risk factors, you'll see them list the possibility of relaxed zoning as something that could drive prices down and fuck them.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Whether you have corporate landlords owning all the housing, or whether you have a landlord class of upper class and upper-middle class private individuals owning all the housing, both are incentivized to keep supply low in order to maintain and grow existing home values.

You have to either decommodify housing entirely and completely stop subjecting it to market forces, where the only property you can own is personal property. Or, keep housing as a commodity but have a gigantic, well-funded nationwide federal government housing effort that sees the feds acting as the nation's largest housing contractor that builds millions of homes. This both fills the hole in the housing supply created by current market dynamics and it forces them to compete with the federal housing contractor so they start increasing supply as well.

Either way, it is insane and immoral to subject the most fundamental of human needs to pure market forces. It either needs to be shielded from market forces entirely, or at least to a significant degree.

Or just letting the markets work would also bring prices way down. Look at how everyone can afford a smart phone now.

 

[blackheart]

Or just letting the markets work would also bring prices way down. Look at how everyone can afford a smart phone now.

I literally cannot tell if you're taking a jab at the free market hucksters or being serious.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I literally cannot tell if you're taking a jab at the free market hucksters or being serious.

I'm being serious. What drives prices up are restrictions on building. There are things that markets don't do well and times when you need regulations, but providing affordable versions of things people want is something they do extremely well if you let them.

 

[blackheart]

I'm being serious. What drives prices up are restrictions on building. There are things that markets don't do well and times when you need regulations, but providing affordable versions of things people want is something they do extremely well if you let them.

Comparing cell phones to housing is just...whew buddy. In what period of time did cell phones as a whole go through a cycle of people hoarding them and then reselling them for many times their worth? This is an extremely poor analysis and comparison. There are vast material differences between housing and electronics. One of the most obvious being that you don't require a cell phone to live. The tolerance for free market forces applied to cell phones is much greater as any extreme market fluctuations have a negligible impact on people's lives.

It's only been a half century. The free market will create ideal housing any day now

Me waiting on that "free market" to solve the housing supply issue any day now -

 

[panamaican]

The crisis is not just with homebuyers, its also with renters as rents in the major metro areas have risen a lot. We're seeing that a building boom in some states is slowly bringing rents down but rent remains high in many major metro areas.

Of course people want single family homes which is why they will always be built and bought, I don't think we need to ban other types of homes in suburbs which is the status quo in most cities. Let the market decide by deregulating and cutting red tape. To be clear here when I mention multifamily homes that doesn't necessarily mean apartment buildings, to frame this as a conversation between only apartment buildings and SFHs is a false dichotomy. I don't think its reasonable to build a 15 floor apartment building in the middle of an R1 suburb but there can and should be space made for medium density homes like accessory dwelling units and multiplexes. Allowing these things is also a good way for homeowners to increase their property values by adding units to their property. Instead of simply sitting on a SFH and waiting for it to appreciate one could renovate it into a duplex and add an ADU in the backyard which triples the number of units on the lot making it more valuable to rent or sell.

If anything there's an excess supply of SFH. The average household size is shrinking with more and more SFHs being occupied by empty nest parents who don't want to sell because of high interest rates. Allowing them to add units would mean they could continue to live on the property while renting out the other units. Some older folks will build an ADU and move into that while renting out the primary dwelling. Others add units to accommodate a multigenerational household. I see no reason why these things should be illegal or excessively impeded by red tape and I think that allowing them gives both property owners and renters more options. Not everyone who wants or needs to rent necessarily wants to live in the heart of the city and homeowners having more flexibility to invest in their own property would allow the housing market to expand into different niches that are currently underserved.

The crisis is predominantly about homebuyers. Rents are high because builders are building high rent buildings, not because they're not building new units. And they're building high rent units because there's enough people to afford them.

No one is complaining about the zoning restrictions on multiunit buildings in the suburbs because no one wants that type of housing. You keep saying "let the market decide" but it is the market that decided. If there was a market for it, builders and developers would seek variances or lobby the local zoning board to expand the zoning allowances. That the market isn't lobbying for this is because they know there isn't a market for it (all of the push for this type of building comes from the housing advocacy side, not the buyers, not the developers). I assure you there are almost no builders and developers who are looking at suburban real estate and saying "I should throw up low income triplexes instead of high value SFHs."

It speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of the market. And, accordingly, a misunderstanding of why corporate consuption of single family housing is so problematic.

You keep talking about building housing that no one wants in places that no one wants it and then allude to the market. The market wants single family houses near work or school. This type of housing exists but is also highly competitive on the buying side. Competition between home owners who intend to live and raise families and build wealth is very different from competition between homeowners who intend to raise families vs. corporations who are using those properties to extract wealth from the families.

I'm curious why you think there's a consumer market for multifamily dwellings in the suburbs? (Not why you think they'd be beneficial but why you think anyone in the market to buy a house wants them.)

 

[panamaican]

Or just letting the markets work would also bring prices way down. Look at how everyone can afford a smart phone now.

I slightly disagree when it comes housing. If people wanted certain types of housing, developers would have long since lobbied for that housing.

The reality is that without government intervention, most low income housing isn't economically feasible to build. People have to understand that the market doesn't want builders to build low income housing. Governments want it. Housing advocates want it. People who can afford to buy houses don't want it. Developers don't want it.

So when people say let the market decide, it kind of already did.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Comparing cell phones to housing is just...whew buddy. In what period of time did cell phones as a whole go through a cycle of people hoarding them and then reselling them for many times their worth? This is an extremely poor analysis and comparison. There are vast material differences between housing and electronics. One of the most obvious being that you don't require a cell phone to live. The tolerance for free market forces applied to cell phones is much greater as any extreme market fluctuations have a negligible impact on people's lives.

It's only been a half century. The free market will create ideal housing any day now

Me waiting on that "free market" to solve the housing supply issue any day now -

The free market has not had a chance to create housing. I'd say rather that we know that after decades of restricting growth, the effects are to greatly increase prices and that experiment should be considered a failure.

The fact that people need places to live is all the more reason to allow supply to be built to meet demand (and not to use gov't force to prevent supply growth).

 

[blackheart]

Also @Jack V Savage - what models in the world can you point to where your free market ideology has created ideal housing conditions? Because I can point to extremely successful housing models and their conditions and they're all practicing some version or degree of what I am suggesting - not what you're suggesting. It will never not strike me as odd that you're quite sharp but when it comes to capitalism you depart from empiricism and become an idealist and ideologue for free markets.

 

[Sinister]

Also @Jack V Savage - what models in the world can you point to where your free market ideology has created ideal housing conditions? Because I can point to extremely successful housing models and their conditions and they're all practicing some version or degree of what I am suggesting - not what you're suggesting. It will never not strike me as odd that you're quite sharp but when it comes to capitalism you depart from empiricism and become an idealist and ideologue for free markets.

Its weird how we are very aware, as a society, of what market failure is because we had industries that were once private and made public because of it. Police and Fire departments started out private, until it became unaffordable for individuals to pay to have their burning houses put out. Public funding became a much better option and kept these entities from engaging in malicious competition and exploitation of users. This was largely due to the high cost of running a fire department, which it was said necessitated the high per-use rate. Now Police and Fire departments typically have no issues with funding, and users dont have to worry about paying out the wazoo for every visit.

But nowadays whenever we see distinct signs of market failure some people blame the Government, others blame corporations, other still blame immigrants and poor people. But in housing, medicine, and a few other industries modern Americans just refuse to consider that we might be seeing the same market failures repeated. A huge red flag, to me, is when you have the working class rooting against each other. No one should be "waiting for the market to crash"...which will assuredly put families on the streets, so they can afford a home themselves. And there is definitely market manipulation happening. The NAR just had two huge lawsuits over it.

 

[Islam Imamate]

Of course the NIMBY problem is going to be more visible, because tracking who influences politicians via campaign contributions and donations, and who is helping write their legislation is trickier. I'm not saying those types of people aren't a problem, they have been since the concept of suburban life became a thing, but it's also become profitable for the largest most influential developers to perpetuate this and only want to build the types of housing that make them the most money. The smaller developers who would like to build more of what we need are locked out from that avenue as well, and in all of this no one actually gives a f*ck about fixing the homeless problem short of criminalizing people existing outside.

I guess we disagree which one is the primary driving force. I see NIMBYism as the primary driving force.

Whether you have corporate landlords owning all the housing, or whether you have a landlord class of upper class and upper-middle class private individuals owning all the housing, both are incentivized to keep supply low in order to maintain and grow existing home values.

You have to either decommodify housing entirely and completely stop subjecting it to market forces, where the only property you can own is personal property. Or, keep housing as a commodity but have a gigantic, well-funded nationwide federal government housing effort that sees the feds acting as the nation's largest housing contractor that builds millions of homes. This both fills the hole in the housing supply created by current market dynamics and it forces them to compete with the federal housing contractor so they start increasing supply as well.

Either way, it is insane and immoral to subject the most fundamental of human needs to pure market forces. It either needs to be shielded from market forces entirely, or at least to a significant degree.

The crisis is predominantly about homebuyers. Rents are high because builders are building high rent buildings, not because they're not building new units. And they're building high rent units because there's enough people to afford them.

No one is complaining about the zoning restrictions on multiunit buildings in the suburbs because no one wants that type of housing. You keep saying "let the market decide" but it is the market that decided. If there was a market for it, builders and developers would seek variances or lobby the local zoning board to expand the zoning allowances. That the market isn't lobbying for this is because they know there isn't a market for it (all of the push for this type of building comes from the housing advocacy side, not the buyers, not the developers). I assure you there are almost no builders and developers who are looking at suburban real estate and saying "I should throw up low income triplexes instead of high value SFHs."

It speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of the market. And, accordingly, a misunderstanding of why corporate consuption of single family housing is so problematic.

You keep talking about building housing that no one wants in places that no one wants it and then allude to the market. The market wants single family houses near work or school. This type of housing exists but is also highly competitive on the buying side. Competition between home owners who intend to live and raise families and build wealth is very different from competition between homeowners who intend to raise families vs. corporations who are using those properties to extract wealth from the families.

I'm curious why you think there's a consumer market for multifamily dwellings in the suburbs? (Not why you think they'd be beneficial but why you think anyone in the market to buy a house wants them.)

When it comes to real estate location is one of the primary drivers of cost. Here's a 600sqft 1BR/1B condo in NYC that's listed at $125,000 and here's a 2,288 sqft 3BR/2B house In West Virginia that's listed at $129,000. Demand to live in major metro areas is what is largely driving up prices. Of course many developers will focus on luxury units but that's partly because of delays and costs imposed by excessive environmental review and community oversight meetings which make it such that only luxury developments are viable.

I personally know of at least two cases off the top of my head of homeowners who wanted to add an additional unit on their SFH. One for his elderly parents and the other for their adult children. The former was barred and just didn't do it and his parents died and the latter did it anyway and had to pay a fine when code enforcement came around. Sure many neighbors might not want that but I think its silly to argue that people leveraging the government to ban the building of certain home types is the market at work because if those folks were allowed to they would've built and kept the extra units.

And if that is the argument then it still falls apart as we're seeing zoning reform across the country to allow for more density in R1 suburbs such as laws to relax codes around ADUs and multiplexes. Some are even streamlining the building of such units with preapproved designs. This didn't come out of nowhere, its because of the housing crisis that these reforms are happening.

People in the market to buy a SFH are going to look for SFHs. Adding multifamily units to suburbs is a way to add units to the rental market for those who would like to pay less for the same amount of space or otherwise live in the suburbs but either can't afford to buy a SFH or otherwise don't want to. Its also a way for those who own SFHs to increase their property value and create an extra income stream without having to buy an entirely new property. People looking to rent such units are those who are lower income(which includes those from middle and upper middle class families who are starting their careers) and those looking to buy them are those with extended families that want to live together. In Canada part of the reason such houses were banned was because immigrants from Asia were renovating their SFHs into multifamily ones as their children became adults and the family expanded. This is common in Asia, in fact my dad paid to have such a house built for his parents and siblings back in India. But that would be illegal in most places in the US and Canada.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I slightly disagree when it comes housing. If people wanted certain types of housing, developers would have long since lobbied for that housing.

Developers do lobby for housing. But homeowners lobby against it and are generally more successful (depends on the area).

The reality is that without government intervention, most low income housing isn't economically feasible to build. People have to understand that the market doesn't want builders to build low income housing. Governments want it. Housing advocates want it. People who can afford to buy houses don't want it. Developers don't want it.

So when people say let the market decide, it kind of already did.

First, "low-income" housing is a separate issue. My point is just that allowing supply to meet demand would do a lot to reduce the market price of housing. This seems really obvious to me. If there were limits on how much of anything could be sold, it would obviously drive the price of that thing up. But also, it's precisely because of the very high barriers to building that developers need to hit home runs on investments they're allowed to make.