| > Put simply, building more housing solves housing affordability just like building more roads solves traffic. It doesn't! It does, in both cases. Induced demand is a garbage theory. It's basically the idea that if you increase supply by 50%, and then lower prices increase demand by 20%, you would then have to increase supply by another 20%. Which would increase demand by 5%. But that just means you should increase supply by 80% to begin with so you have enough for both the existing and additional demand. The latter is finite. > Cheaper housing = more kids = just-as-expensive housing within a generation, in a vicious cycle. More kids are good, actually? It prevents economic collapse as a result of an ageing population. The US fertility rate is already below the population replacement rate -- in significant part as a result of high housing costs. > The planet, this human ant farm that we live in, frankly, is full. You need to build more housing even for a given level of population because demand shifts around, e.g. Detroit has negative population growth so existing housing in Detroit doesn't satisfy demand in San Francisco. > The Earth can't take more housing and more greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions are solvable independent of housing. You can heat a house using electric heat pumps and power heat pumps from renewable or nuclear energy without CO2 emissions. If you want to solve CO2 you use a carbon tax, not zoning laws. If anything restricting the number of kids does the opposite because you get more childless retirees with little incentive to vote for preserving the future because they were deprived of the opportunity to have a family to care about the future of. |