No it's not. It's 2 cherry picked data points with a sample size of 1 of a complex system with multiple confounding factors such as a pandemic

You can look at other neighborhoods such as palms in Los Angeles, which has the most aggressive housing build out in all of California. Median rent has increased - sometimes more housing can create more demand

What if the people in power don't want prices to go down?

I just hope that people remember this is just one factor affecting quality of life and making a city work.

"Density at all costs" ignores a huge set of tradeoffs that are equally as damaging to a city. Things such as urban form, street experience, long-term adaptability, integration with existing fabric, economic resilience, etc. These are the things that make a city work in the long term.

I’m a big proponent of building more housing. But a lot of it is being doing in very short sided ways that lead to huge externalities.

We could but it’s not always just “good” to make things dense.

My hometown has had a huge push to add more housing to make things more affordable. What happened? Rents went down for a couple years then right back up. Except now the city has a bunch of more soulless condos and is horribly congested.

Sometimes preserving things and keeping them nice and simple even if it’s costs a bit of a premium is better.

Developers not recouping their investment will discourage less housing in Austin in the future and it will become expensive again. A lot of our current housing shortages are from the build up in 2008 and an implosion of the entire industry (so that crafts people did not really exist for the next need for housing).