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> The postwar years saw a huge boom in housing construction which created a few decades of housing availability that may just never exist again nor should it.

> The postwar years saw a huge boom in housing construction which created a few decades of housing availability that may just never exist again nor should it. There's plenty of demand for housing. There's no reason we can't build more to meet that need, other than regulation.

hungryforcodes 3y ago
This is true and not true. Desirable land aka location is where everyone wants to buy. This drives the price up. Building in the middle of nowhere increases available housing, but doesn't solve the problem really, because no one wants to live there. In theory remote work could help with this problem, but honestly it's really only available to workers who work in offices. People with physical jobs like Amazon warehouse workers and restaurant staff and construction workers...all have to live somewhere near where they work.
- ghaff 3y ago
  >In theory remote work could help with this problem, but honestly it's really only available to workers who work in offices. And I daresay that even most of the professional class who could live anywhere in the country they wanted to probably don't want to live in or near some small midwestern city or many of the other places where housing is relatively cheap. (Some of that is preserving future employment options but even if you take that off the table, there's still almost certainly a common preference for at least the general vicinity of large mostly coastal cities--and tons of excuses why this location or that location is a non-starter.)
ghaff 3y ago
There's also plenty of relatively inexpensive housing in many areas of the US (can't really speak to Canada) but many people are less inclined to live in those areas for a variety of reasons.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  There was in Canada, too, before the pandemic. But it was a fairly small amount in terms of actual housing units, and in 2020-2021 it was almost completely swallowed up by people leaving Toronto and Vancouver for places like the Maritimes and Vancouver Island. They could build more capacity, but the price of land has risen in advance of that.

hungryforcodes 3y ago

This is true and not true. Desirable land aka location is where everyone wants to buy. This drives the price up. Building in the middle of nowhere increases available housing, but doesn't solve the problem really, because no one wants to live there. In theory remote work could help with this problem, but honestly it's really only available to workers who work in offices. People with physical jobs like Amazon warehouse workers and restaurant staff and construction workers...all have to live somewhere near where they work.

ghaff 3y ago
>In theory remote work could help with this problem, but honestly it's really only available to workers who work in offices. And I daresay that even most of the professional class who could live anywhere in the country they wanted to probably don't want to live in or near some small midwestern city or many of the other places where housing is relatively cheap. (Some of that is preserving future employment options but even if you take that off the table, there's still almost certainly a common preference for at least the general vicinity of large mostly coastal cities--and tons of excuses why this location or that location is a non-starter.)

ghaff 3y ago

There's also plenty of relatively inexpensive housing in many areas of the US (can't really speak to Canada) but many people are less inclined to live in those areas for a variety of reasons.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
There was in Canada, too, before the pandemic. But it was a fairly small amount in terms of actual housing units, and in 2020-2021 it was almost completely swallowed up by people leaving Toronto and Vancouver for places like the Maritimes and Vancouver Island. They could build more capacity, but the price of land has risen in advance of that.