[mwt]

It's just diffusing the problem from urban centers to mid-sized cities elsewhere in the united states. Say for simplicity that the core result of the problem is that people not making astronomical tech/finance/etc. salaries can't live in NYC because people making those salaries are scooping up supply and driving up rent ($5,000/month and higher). Then say the solution is to let some amount of people move to smaller cities and work remotely, enough that NYC prices somehow magically drop 20%. Well, where are those jobs going to go / how much of a salary penalty are people going to take to move from NYC to STL, Austin, Nashville, Columbus, Denver, Ann Arbor, and Raleigh? Because they're not going to suddenly be making the same salaries that engineers already in those cities make, they're going to want more. And they're going to scoop up housing supply and put pressure on those housing markets. The same forces keeping NYC rent at $5,000 have caused places like Nashville to become unlivable for the lifers; your grocery store workers and baristas can't get by with $3,000/month rent there either.

It would be lovely if the solution for skyrocketing rents in the big 2-3 urban centers didn't simply shift the problem to every other city, but there's no indication at all that will happen.