4 ms·

Yeah, but since you need to live somewhere people would probably be willing to drop all kinds of other things first.

• iso1631 5y ago
  They already do. Price is set to a level of what people are able to pay, to a point where enough people are priced out that they can't live where they want because they can't afford it. Until supply massively increases, price does not reduce. Artificial changes like government subsidised rent schemes allow distribution of housing on non-financial means. This allows wages for people like teachers, shop clerks, security guards etc to stay low, and that's not good. Building outward does not increase supply in the city centre, increasing density does. Nothing encourages increasing density like charging. Imagine a $300/year/square foot charge. Not many people would be buying a low density 1000 square-foot house with $450k/year tax, instead there would be a massive demand to build 150 apartments on that lot instead, which would cost $2k a year each. There are currently plenty of places to live cheaply. There are not plenty of places to live where people want to live (central cities), so prices are higher there. The only solution to that is to increase availability where people want to live.