[wahnfrieden]

Makes no sense. You can build until demand goes down. Demand is high in part because supply’s low. If there were more homes than rich people who wanted them, prices would be lower. But that doesn’t happen because of NIMBYism. I suspect you know all this but are mythologizing the situation as inescapable destiny.

Maybe you’re used to seeing half measures. Be careful with that because half measures are sometimes used as justification to throw out the whole idea of progress instead of doing it properly (“well we tried that and things were still bad so now we have to do it my way”)

[mlrtime]

>Makes no sense. You can build until demand goes down.

It makes a lot of sense when you realize who builds and brings capital. Debeers for an extreme example.

[wahnfrieden]

I understand why building doesn't happen. OP is saying that even if you build, it's hopeless because demand is endlessly met by rich people keeping prices high.

[grafmax]

Let’s say prices go down until houses are sold at cost. Even at cost people with little money won’t be able to buy houses.

[wahnfrieden]

Labor costs and a big part of materials cost is driven by landlords

[pandaman]

Even when rents go down to cost, they are still going to be greater than zero and labor and materials won't turn free. Cost won't ever be so low that one could afford housing while doing nothing productive and even less so while indulging in a drug habit.

[wahnfrieden]

The comment I'm replying to is about working-class families who are priced out

[pandaman]

Since the US had been deindustrialized, most of the working class is now in service sector and does not produce much. Thus service labor is discounted and the construction labor is at premium. Basically, if it costs 1000 man-days of labor to build a house all in (materials, tooling, labor itself) it will have to cost 1000*k man-hours of waiting tables, where k is the discount coefficient between doing a skilled back-breaking labor and taking orders from the tables to the kitchen. At some values of k there is just not enough working days in the lifetime.