I think supply + demand oversimplifies one major issue. Wages are extremely inflated in certain hotkey areas with housing issues. There was a story somebody sh

I think supply + demand oversimplifies one major issue. Wages are extremely inflated in certain hotkey areas with housing issues. There was a story somebody shared a couple of months back on here about somebody in the Bay Area working at a cafe unable to find affordable housing on the $75k he was taking home. The point of the article was supposed to be pointing out that even such high wages don't solve the problem, but I think the more salient point is that high wages cause the problem. Cafe work is relatively low skill. When you can take home 250% the median personal income for low skill work, you're never going to find affordable housing. Such high wages are already driving seemingly endless economic migration with unaffordable housing. Add in reasonably affordable housing and you just exponentially increase the demand. The point of this is that I think it's questionable about whether or not you can build your way out of this. There are two examples we can look at for lessons: Hong Kong and Tokyo. The current situation is that both are extremely densely populated areas. Hong Kong has 17,552 people per square mile, Tokyo's at 16,121. Hong Kong is extremely expensive whereas Tokyo has become a somewhat reasonably affordable place to live. Many people have tried to attribute this to various programs the Japanese government has carried out. In reality, one factor plays a dominant role. In the 90s many expected Japan to become the world's leading economy. They were actually far ahead of the US in terms of GDP/capita. Since then they've gone through decades of something between recession and stagnation. Their GDP was higher in 1995 than it is today. Hong Kong, by contrast, is much more like all the other areas facing housing pricing issues. Their GDP continues to exponentially accelerate - far more than doubling since 1995 with a continuing exponential growth. Japan, in general, became affordable because it became economically less desirable. And ultimately I think that is the only solution - but it's one few would ever lobby for! On the other hand if your goal is not to actually create affordable housing, but instead to simply maximize your GDP then things become much more interesting - but that's an entirely different topic.