[graaben]

I haven't really seen much written on this (maybe I'm just not looking) but what does the future look like when only the top 10-20% can afford a home? Do 80% of families rent forever with no real possibility of being able to buy a home near an economic center? What does that look like for the broader society when so much of the American dream and self-worth is built on being a homeowner?

I live in LA and I think about this a lot when I see the only homes for sale here going for $3-4+ million. How much longer can this continue?

[01100011]

I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand we have a massive wealth/power gap and I desperately want myself and every other human to have a shot at owning a single-family home in a desirable area with all of the comforts of modern life.

On the other hand I know that we are overtaxing the world's resources and short of some massive changes in our system many middle class folks in the western world are going to see a drop in their quality of life as globalization continues and our living standards average out with those of people in developing nations.

[closeparen]

A mass-affordable Los Angeles is geometrically impossible. The single-family house and car culture are central to what it means to be "LA" and there are fundamental scaling limits on those.

[strangesongs]

It's not impossible, but people are stubborn and the voices of home owners/drivers dominate the conversation over anything else.

Those things are scalable -- LA's light rail network is one of the biggest in the country and it's incredible efficient. Over a million people (of a city of 4 million) use LA Metro on a daily basis.

There's no reason LA's fundamental character as a city would change if we allowed duplexes in already dense neighborhoods or as much BRT as possible. But instead we've prioritized voices like the Bel-Air Homeowners Association or some NIMBY idiots in Santa Monica to make policy decisions and are stuck with environmental review on projects that demolish, say, 4 parking spots to build 40 affordable housing units.

[hackerfromthefu]

When you increase population density significantly, the nature of a place changes.

In other words it will no longer be the same LA, but rather LAtropolis .. so gp is right about the physical limits.

[JoeJonathan]

LA was zoned for ~10 million as recently as 1960. While I think you're right that the problem is probably intractable—who would want to give up their house for an apartment, unless maybe a dense, walkable area appeared overnight?—I wonder if there are legislative solutions, like rolling back Prop 13 (which will probably never happen).

[strangesongs]

But people don't have to give up single family homes to create density -- we just need to build more of everything else, wherever we can, to increase housing.

No one is coming for existing single-family homes -- they can peacefully co-exist alongside properties that house 5x the amount of people.

[graaben]

I'm not even talking about mass-affordable, I just mean being able to buy a home on less than a $600k/yr income. Do wages and housing prices continue to grow at 20% YoY indefinitely in cities like this, eventually pricing out everyone except the ultra high net worth?

[closeparen]

As long as there are fewer homes coming available than ultra high net worth people who want to live in them, absolutely.