[acyou]

But if we own real estate, we see the limitation and destruction of housing stock as value creation benefiting own personal assets. From that perspective, reducing this sort of low cost housing makes perfect sense.

Generations of young people have embraced this by joining em, not beating them, but this is becoming more and more difficult. It's unclear what prevents any one municipality from going vertical with young people buying, rezoning and building, I think it's related to the lack of income opportunities in some areas, as well as the built in and entrenched voter base. But as soon as any group gets in, they are pulling up the ladder, that's always going to be the case.

[roguecoder]

This is why zoning should never have been made a local question.

People who want to live in the area but can't because it is unaffordable don't get a vote, and the exclusionary communities become self-reinforcing.

But Americas really, really like being racist, so now our housing market is f'ked.

[treis]

This is and has been happening everywhere in the US except for the expensive coastal metros and maybe Chicago. What you're asking for comprises the vast majority of house that's been built in the last 10 years in my city. Dozens of 5-10 story apartment complexes with nothing bigger than a 2BR.

HN and people like the guy that wrote this article live in a bubble. There's plenty of cheap housing available in most of the country. It's people renting out rooms for $5-700 a month in a suburban house.

[schmidtleonard]

1000%. The good solution is Georgism (perhaps with rolling leases, which are hard to manipulate, rather than LVT, which is easy to manipulate) but obviously everyone who bought into the ponzi will fight you tooth and nail so probably the best we can hope for is to slap the Nth bandaid on the problem with some NIMBY busting.