>Because it sure doesn't look like that at all, it looks like lack of supply to meet people's needs
That is certainly the propaganda line that is being pushed in order to eventually justify public subsidies for builders. The shortage of affordable housing is commonly conflated with a mythical shortage of physical housing. There is a shortage of affordable housing because residential valuations have risen out-of-step with everything (including wage growth and inflation) except the desired ROI of the securities that they underlie. This is what we get when homes are more valuable as assets than domiciles, which, again, is emphatically not what they were in the modern past (even at the top end; robber baron palaces were not built as wealth stores so much as prestige amplifiers; they were not the investment (i.e., meant to be aold or borrowed against), but multipliers for the actual investment (one's social standing and influence). They often only left the family at a loss.).
We don't need a massive amount of new housing. But I agree that the solution will involve, for once, throwing homeowners rather than homeseekers under the bus.
Yes.
>Because it sure doesn't look like that at all, it looks like lack of supply to meet people's needs
That is certainly the propaganda line that is being pushed in order to eventually justify public subsidies for builders. The shortage of affordable housing is commonly conflated with a mythical shortage of physical housing. There is a shortage of affordable housing because residential valuations have risen out-of-step with everything (including wage growth and inflation) except the desired ROI of the securities that they underlie. This is what we get when homes are more valuable as assets than domiciles, which, again, is emphatically not what they were in the modern past (even at the top end; robber baron palaces were not built as wealth stores so much as prestige amplifiers; they were not the investment (i.e., meant to be aold or borrowed against), but multipliers for the actual investment (one's social standing and influence). They often only left the family at a loss.).
We don't need a massive amount of new housing. But I agree that the solution will involve, for once, throwing homeowners rather than homeseekers under the bus.