[joe_the_user]

The increase in price of housing is what's driving inflation, not vv imo.

That's like saying "price increases lead to inflation". Which is true but illuminating.

Limitations on housing construction certainly made homes especially valuable as an investment in places like California. But the vast amount of money-created-out-of-thin-air was what sought this reliable investments. The situation you mention is just related to what I describe, it doesn't refute what I describe.

The main thing is that this inflating of money has a number of noxious qualities, the inflation of housing costs just being one of them. Prices are signals for how resources should be allocated and distorted prices result in distorted allocations of resources. For small example, there's a daft and dangerous plane to restart a fricken gold mine in the little tourist next to my town - with all attendant potential for multiple types of pollution and with gold only getting kind of play because it's a fixed asset with a price driven sky-high by the present money creation process.