[tokioyoyo]

I’ve been part of housing-related online discussions for a decade now, and everything reads like a wish-list.

- Majority of people own their homes. So it’s in their best interest for the housing prices at the very least not go down.

- Less, but still, some amount of people are buying houses with sky high prices. After a huge purchase, they will also do their best to ensure prices don’t go down.

- Another good chunk of people are waiting out to inherit homes from their parents.

All these people, in one way or another, will protect asset prices (e.g. voting for certain people to ensure nothing gets built). The only ways I can see it being resolved is:

- China-style benevolent dictatoresque commitment to surgical detachment of housing prices from the general economy (they’re trying, a lot of people are unhappy, but some progress is visible)

- Population collapse, to reduce the demand. But looking at Japan, metro areas will keep skyrocketing, because people will flock to the main cities even more

Any of the options will make a lot of people unhappy. A huge political no-go zone.

All the talks about allowing construction and streamlining the process have been circulated for a decade+ at this point. But incentives for people aren’t there. “I got mine, don’t care about you” is the general attitude of majority of people.

[big_toast]

I've thought about that for a while and agree that's a big problem. I wonder if people unwilling to 'exit' bear some responsibility too?

I agree most owners are incentivized to have their leveraged ROIC be high. So they put pretty strong pressure against supply increases.

Defectors (other neighborhoods, cities, regions, states) and other living options might tank actual long term ROIC of supply constrained places. The economics eventually stop working in the supply constrained place as the real cost of housing production is significantly lower elsewhere.

[HaZeust]

I've always wondered if UBI can replace the category of "viable asset class" that homes are now, wherein UBI offers upward mobility now AND generational wealthy in the future - the same way owning a house does. Wouldn't that be a valid populist play, an actual policy rooted in pragmatic, and all-around a winning strategy?

[tokioyoyo]

UBI is also another topic that has been discussed intensively for the past couple of decades. I don’t see it being implemented almost for the same reasons as cheap housing. On top of it, we experienced UBI-lite during pandemic, and saw the inflationary result. “But it wasn’t perfect UBI” argument won’t really fly either in the current political world.

People are generally selfish and will want the best for themselves and their loved ones.

[HaZeust]

>"On top of it, we experienced UBI-lite during pandemic, and saw the inflationary result."

I sympathize with this take because it's the one I had, until I saw the data. On top of genuinely appealing to the fact it wasn't perfect UBI - which doesn't make it an invalid take just because you pre-emptively pointed it out - our inflation during COVID-era relief was overwhelmingly from abuse of PPP loan applications and payouts, disaster relief funds - and a healthy chunk to the federal subsidizing of state/local governments [1]:

"Congress has obligated approximately $5 trillion in response to the COVID pandemic although significant portions of this money remain unspent. For reference, in fiscal 2020, the total state spending for all 50 states was $2.28 trillion, or less than half of the pandemic relief spending. Of the obligated relief funds, approximately $1.8 trillion went to individuals and families through $844 billion in stimulus check payments and $666 billion in enhanced unemployment compensation.

Additionally, businesses received approximately $1.7 trillion, much of which came from the $835 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and $349 billion Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Program. State and local governments received $745 billion, the health care industry received approximately $482 billion, and other remaining industries received approximately $288 billion."

To add, there's also the case that one of the industries most hurt from COVID, which was automobile sales, was impacted by the stimulus checks - but by less than 20% [2]:

"Despite this substantial demand response, fiscal transfers account for less than 20% of the surge in auto prices"

1 - https://www.taf.org/covid-19-relief-funds-two-years-later-wh...

2 - https://www.nber.org/papers/w34954

[smallmancontrov]

Also, the Federal Reserve bought $2 trillion of mortgage backed securities, pumping the housing market massively.