If there are both families and individuals bidding for those reasonably sized homes, giving the latter a cheaper alternative should reduce for the larger houses, no?
We also already have cheaper alternatives in e.g. studio apartments, and we currently have families living in those.
I don't see how building downwards will solve these problems in a decent way going forward--it seems that it could only continually reduce peoples' living conditions.
Suddenly, there's a cheaper, lower end product that meets my needs. I go for that, someone who needs or wants the higher end product can go for that.
The article is not saying "build micro-apartments instead of normal ones". It is saying "make it possible to build micro-apartments alongside normal ones".
But do micro-apartments not just exacerbate the actual problem--that decent, reasonably sized homes for people in good locations are too rare or too expensive?
I can understand how these micro-homes might appeal to people in certain circumstances (I spent a while myself splitting a tiny studio in Seattle with a few other people--and that same apartment costs ~3x now what it did when I lived there 5 years ago), but I can't see how the problems these are trying to solve wouldn't be much better solved by building new desirable areas, increasing the supply of good housing, and driving the costs of all housing down.