alt Hacker NewsNo, you just happened to build appropriately because a certain subfaction of the population weren't able to pass the typical laws that would stop building.
The housing shortage was created by regulation and it's foolish or selfish to pretend otherwise.
Austin is unique in that most of the harmful self-serving conservatism-as-in-block-and-deny-all-development that city people usually to do is constrained by the rest of the state, and as an obvious result arguably has the highest standard of living in the entire world.
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That's fair. "Overbuilt" was probably the wrong term.
But yeah, we built a LOT of housing and that means buyers and renters have a lot of choice.
It's hard to argue that's a bad thing unless you're a property owner who's upset their house didn't appreciate 20% in 5 years.
kind of.. and kind of not
regulation /tends/ to be introduced because builders are misbehaving (bad materials, bad workmanship, building in flood zones, etc), but the bigger problem is NIMBY who then use those laws to prevent other people building in "their" neighbourhood
highest standard of living unless you're a woman or a trans person, or a person of color, you mean. I'm sure living in a repressive dictatorship is awesome if you're a rich member of the in-group.