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I get what you're trying to say but parenthetically that's not really what fungible means. Fungibility implies interchangeability. Every dollar is the same as e

I get what you're trying to say but parenthetically that's not really what fungible means. Fungibility implies interchangeability. Every dollar is the same as every other dollar. Every gallon of water is the same as every other gallon of water. Luxury housing by definition is not fungible with low-cost housing. The concept you're trying to describe is called "filtering."[0] In any event, abundant housing is essential to filtering taking place. If there is scarcity, for example, if there's already a pent up demand for luxury units, then those units can be quickly occupied without anybody vacating the older units, and then the price won't go down. It might even go up if low-cost housing was torn down to make room for the luxury units. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filtering_(housing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filtering_(housing)

aetherson 3y ago
I suppose the technical term is that one house is substitutable for another house. But I think that the fungibility of housing -- while by no means perfect or absolute -- gets at the core of the concept. It's like when you target funds in a large organization. Yes, your $100 donation goes to, say, fund program X, but money is fungible and the org can just pull $100 of its general funds out of program X and put it in program Y. Housing is of course less perfectly fungible than dollars, but at the end of the day almost all units of housing house one (1) household, and that household needed somewhere to go, and using this unit of housing for this household frees up more housing for another household.