It’s a difficult problem not because we don’t know the simple solutions (supply and demand). It’s difficult because the people who have the majority vote also typically own the houses and they obviously don’t want the prices to go down. This is not just speaking about the US, many countries are facing this issue

New construction has already decelerated in Austin due to falling prices, which compresses already-near-zero margin on real estate development.

So yes, it really is "just build more housing." The problem is: why would you build more housing as prices fall?

Vienna built housing itself, with this housing it was possible to have cheap rents and keep rents from private investors down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Vienna

This comment is phrased as if the article is confirming these points when it either doesn't mention them or even directly refutes them. First there is no mention of either crime or rent control in the article. But more importantly, it states that "A key piece of Austin’s strategy has been to encourage the construction of affordable housing." So why are you concluding that affordable housing isn't needed?

There is a massive difference between rental prices and home ownership. There is a further difference apartment rentals and single family rentals.

Rented apartments are a commodity with features. Owned houses are fixed assets with different economic rules.

Rent control is one of the best ideas, and it may be a civilizational, foundational idea.

Property ownership is at the very core of entrenched power, and the foundation of rent-seeking and wealth asymmetry.

If you look at even the Monarchs of long past - it wasn't their 'titles' that made them powerful - it was the economic rent that came along with the land ownership.

Even in more open market economies, property is still is basically long term economics lording over short term economics of wage earning workers.

Being able to kick someone out of their home almost arbitrary basically puts working class people at the 'total whims of the market' and it's one of the most disruptive concepts imaginable.

If we take the view that 'housing is about housing first - only about investment to the extent it does not disrupt housing' - then a different perspective takes shape.

Many Canadian provinces have 'basic rent controls' and it does not generally prevent new housing development.

If anything, providing 'housing stability' is probably the best way to create base prosperity, so those people can go out and spend on all the other things.

There might need to be some degree of leeway here and there for certain kinds of density challenges, but that can be had with rent control

There is almost unlimited land in North America to build on - if in one spot it's a bit difficult - build elsewhere.

If people want to have 'density' then incorporate an area and 'build density' in that area.

Also it does need to be 'affordable' but that can work with regulations.

Edit: our housing problems are about screwed up management, it's actually not even an ideological problem underneath. Like 'rent control' the way it is framed scares some people, but its literally province wide in Ontario, Quebec and it's a 'non issue' for new unit hinderance. Even the nimbyism stuff can be worked around: if people don't want high-rises next to them, it's their right, but there's a lot less opposition to 'mild density' especially if it fits in local cultural and aesthetic context. We can have our cake and it eat on housing. I think we invent ideological lenses because it's easier to frame 'narratives' than it is just weird policies, special circumstances, hiccups, different municipal things going on all at once.

We love solutions to housing that sound good but won’t work, like rent control and subsidizing demand. Building more is unpopular because it would actually work.

The same goes for homelessness. Feel good sound good solutions are popular. Housing the homeless is not.

BTW I have this weird crazy hypothesis that there might be a connection between homelessness and insufficient housing supply. Like, people not in a home, and not enough homes. I know it’s a stretch.

Sometimes I feel like there are other problems like this that we don’t really want to solve but want to pretend to solve.

You may be implying it but you also need to make sure this new housing goes into the long term rental market, instead of being secondary residences or airbnbs. I've seen it happen first hand in my home town. That may not be a problem for Austin though.

>If you build housing, but allow crime to rise

Building enough housing that rents go down is the same thing as lowering crime so not much of an issue there.

> Build more housing. Keep law and order.

At least the latter has been equated with fascism in recent years. That's why it's become such a problem.

Multiple things can be done at once. The policies you laid out are not mutually exclusive, and have different utility for different communities. But yes, fundamentally more housing is needed for growing populations. Conversions and rezoning are also important parts of the urban equation to “build more housing”, not just exurban McMansion developments.

in america, more density and more people always means more crime

It's possible to build more housing and have rent control. Rent control is the only thing allowing working class families to live a dignified life in the USA's most desirable cities. Land value tax and social housing are simply not politically feasible – rent control is.

> No it doesn’t need to be “affordable”

The article directly contradicts you:

> "A key piece of Austin’s strategy has been to encourage the construction of affordable housing."

There is enough data now from around the world that shows that it is important what kind of new housing you build. Building all new luxury units does not lead to lower rents.

Another big factors for Austin is probably the significant decline in population growth in the past few years. But sure, keep spreading blanket statements and misinformation...

I know that there are many "free market" type of dudes on here, so keep the downvotes coming. But he truth is that an unregulated market in housing does not work. Even the "freedom" state Texas has understood this.

> Yes rent control is a terrible idea.

When you aren't building more housing, for whatever reason, rent control is the only thing that prevents domestic 'immigrants' into your city from making all the residents homeless.

Since cities can't stop migration into them, it's the only tool they have to protect their existing residents.

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PS. If you believe in trial-by-combat for housing, why not a similar approach to border control? It's the same concept, open it all up and let the market decide whether your existence is worth it.

There are billions of honest, hard-working, capable people who will happily pay more than you for where you live, do your work for less pay than you're willing to accept, and would love to live... Wherever you currently feel entitled to live.

What gives you any right to deny the market from improving the welfare of your landlord and employer?

Well, build more housing and ensure the more housing is being bought by people who live in it or (if you don't find enough of those) by people who will rent it to them. Many problems occur when capital buys living space as an investment that needs to go up in value, since now there is an incentive to keep some scarcity.

And yet, if you dig through the various comments on HN over the years regarding SF housing costs the overwhelming conesus is more rent control. Sometimes, the most common sense solution turns out to be the correct one.

So pretty much everything you've said here is wrong.

Build more housing? In a place like Austin, you can just keep building out, basically. To a point. Eventually cities doing this reach a limit. Houston and Atlanta are pretty much at or beyond that limit.

And it's not that building low-density SFH housing is the most economic. It's simply the most subsidized. Every road, every parking space, every sewer pipe, every water pipe, every utility pole, every school, every hospital, every police station, every fire station... they all add factor in to the true cost of housing and the more spread out things are, the more expensive those things become. Taken to extremes, look at the billions Houston spends now to add just one more lane (because this one will totally solve traffic) on, say, the Katy Freeway or the ring roads.

Yes it does need to be affordable. NYC is the posterchild for this. Nothing that's getting built on billionaire's row will ever trickle down to being affordable housing. They build ultra-luxury housing because it's the most profitable and it does absolutely nothing for anyone else because these units are just ways for non-residents (mostly) to park wealth and not pay their fair share of taxes.

Rent control is the wrong solution for the right problem and it's typically American. By that I mean it forces the solution onto private landlords who are going to do everything possible to get out of those obligations and deliver subpar but compliant housing. And they'll demand tax breaks for it. When in fact the solution is for the government to supply a large chunk of the housing market ie social housing. But there's a pervasive and wrong idea that we can only solve problems in the private sector and that's nothing more than a wealth transfer from the government to the already-wealthy.

"Just build more housing". Yeah, and then you get Houston. Cities need to be planned. Cities require infrastructure. And one of the most important thing cities need is public transit infrastructure, something sadly lacking in virtually every American city.

The core to so many of these problems is that we need to stop treating housing as a speculative asset. Owning two or more houses should be incredibly difficult and expensive and should be taxed punitively. By this I mean the capital gains on non-primary residences should be 80% and property taxes should be significantly higher.

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> Just build more housing.

Also "Wipe out a whole boatload of techbros who artificially inflate prices". Nobody is talking about that part of the equation.

Austin was one of the places a lot of tech folks flocked to when everybody was working online. RTO and layoffs have wiped a lot of them out. I'd estimate almost 1/3 of the tech folks that were floating around last year are now in other cities.

There is affordable housing all over America. Get it through your head. It’s about nearness to the economic singularity that costs so much not the housing itself.

You have to restrict investors buying up that newly built housing too.

Homes for people. Not investors.

> Its wild how the solution to housing costs is really just:

> Build more housing. Keep law and order.

Safety (law and order) increases housing costs, as you say. It's desireable on its own, but it does not solve housing cost. NYC is very safe and very expensive. Crime is way down in most of the US, and housing costs are much higher.

without rent control, what economic incentive do renters have to maintain law and order / invest in local community / be a good neighbor? any investment they make is captured by the landlord. in fact, they are incentivized to maintain their neighborhood in as much disrepair as they can stand, for fear of rent increases.

the little old lady living in a rent controlled apartment is a big part of why rents are high in that area: she was part of what made the community thrive. we would do well to compensate her for this.

And also expand the city line for what "Austin" is so you can include the cheaper, far from everything housing that you refuse to build.

Yes, it does need to be affordable, and a certain percentage of it needs to be non-market housing. Housing isn't an elastic commodity. Get real.

No, it really is not that easy. Check out China, and read up on the Spanish housing crisis. "Just build more" works only sometimes, as demonstrated in those counter-examples. Housing is massive societal and sociological problem with no simple fix. Furthermore, in many circles, another proposal is to cut red tape. You know, housing in the US already is among the least affordable and lowest quality in the developed world. But some people really insist that going back to asbestos and lead pipes would make housing cheaper.

And don't get me wrong, asbestos and lead are wonderful construction materials. Cheap, durable, and high quality. It's just a shame it causes all sorts of health complications when we use them, right? I mean, it would definitely make housing cheaper, but also cause all kinds of health problems.