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If there is too little housing, then resolving that requires building more housing. You are correct, that it would be possible to build new luxury housing and

If there is too little housing, then resolving that requires building more housing. You are correct, that it would be possible to build new luxury housing and then lower the cost of old luxury housing until it becomes affordable. However, that seems unlikely to actually happen since the owners of the old luxury housing are likely to resist losing money. In some cases, luxury housing may have features (size, density, amenities, etc.) that make is economically unviable to price it as affordable housing.

zmnd 4y ago
That wasn't my experience at all, feels like a theoretical discussion. Let's take something like SoCal, "luxury" housing built 30-50 years ago is not considered luxury. Even if those still advertise as "luxury", they definitely can't ask for the same prices despite companies having monopolies on certain regions. Reality is that it's too expensive to stay a "luxury" housing, all the labor costs and major renovations just don't make sense from a financial perspective. The fundamental issue that people miss is that the cost of building a "luxury" housing and "affordable" is not that different. Throwing quartz countertops and a tiny gym with outdated cheap equipment for a few extra k is nothing when the place costs 500k+. Sizes are also not relevant, since newer apartments are smaller than older ones. We can't just build an old affordable house, that's it. We need to start building as much as we can and impact the demand by evaluating the impact of new businesses coming to the area.