There aren't enough people in most major cities to come anywhere occupying that many bedrooms. Are there enough people in rural areas, suburbs, and minor cities that want to move to major cities to supply renters for them?
> There aren't enough people in most major cities to come anywhere occupying that many bedrooms.
Right now.
But that's because it's too expensive to live there, so people move to outlying areas. But if the cost of housing starts to drop, people will start moving in, which will stymie the cost declines.
I'll admit that I'm not intimately familiar with all of the large cities in the US, but Seattle would be a slam dunk. The suburbs are way more populace than the city itself.
Same with San Francisco, although that city has more problems than just a shortage of housing.
I'm not sure to classify New York City, but Manhattan could easily double its bedrooms with no shortage of demand.
You ain't gonna make it cheap, exactly, in those places. Look at Manhattan compared to Seattle - there's ALREADY far more dense housing in NYC than Seattle, yet prices stay high. People will be willing to pay more for those places with more amenities. That will continue.
But you're gonna make it a lot more livable and arrest the rate of inflation.
It may never be cheap, but it should be possible to drive down the cost of housing to the cost of construction. A big part of getting lots of building done is to take a chainsaw to existing regulation.
* No minimum lot size
* No parking space requirements
* No single family zoning in the city - minimum is multi-family, 15 stories.
* No requirement to match the character of the neighborhood
* No height based additional setbacks
* No rent control
* Get rid of the anti-dorm laws[1]
* No historical preservation without the city buying the property in question
* No building plan for the city - replace it with a "shall issue" policy where the city has to have some affirmative reason to block the permit or it gets issued by default.
There's probably a bunch more that should probably be done away with; those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
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1. It's very common in cities to ban dwellings that house more than x (typically 4) un-related adults.
Right now.
But that's because it's too expensive to live there, so people move to outlying areas. But if the cost of housing starts to drop, people will start moving in, which will stymie the cost declines.
I'll admit that I'm not intimately familiar with all of the large cities in the US, but Seattle would be a slam dunk. The suburbs are way more populace than the city itself.
Same with San Francisco, although that city has more problems than just a shortage of housing.
I'm not sure to classify New York City, but Manhattan could easily double its bedrooms with no shortage of demand.