alt Hacker NewsIt's not actually that complex, as can be seen in Austin: just actually build enough and prices will go down even as population numbers go up. Most US cities have just spent decades doing absolutely everything except actually allow housing to be built.
All things being equal - commuting times, service access, property availability, environmental impacts, education quality, economic stability - then yes, the solution is “easy” in that we “just need to build more housing”.
Once any of those multitude of variables aren’t equal, however, the market can and will exploit it. This is the reason why the housing crisis is global, but the solutions are variable. In New England for instance, there’s a glut of available property currently being hoarded and vacant as an investment hedge, because we have no more land to expand onto. Combined with vacant towns that were former industrial hubs, and there’s an awful lot of available real estate to be clawed back for better use - except markets have been tailored to specifically promote a hoard-and-hedge strategy that harms the working classes (renters and homeowners both), and keeps depressed communities from rebounding. Remote work had a real shot of revitalizing those towns and shattering the vice grip of Capital on land or housing through the relocation of workers to cheaper markets, but the RTO mandate essentially amplified existing crises that much more and robbed them of the chance to rebound.
So no, it’s not as easy as building more housing, it’s also about ensuring those who need housing get access to it first, rather than those who simply seek to extract rent or hold it as an investment hedge.
Again, there’s no silver bullet to this problem.