>2. This is how gentrification works. Many of these folks are coming because they’ve been priced out of wherever they’re coming from.

Yep. If you want to blame someone, blame local governments in California and their chronic refusal to build adequate housing, citing dubious progressive buzzwords to push policies whose outcomes always curiously seem to further enrich property owners and screw over everyone else.

California had a population of 10m in 1950, and 40m today. So presumably some housing was built. In that period California added the GDP of a mid sized European economy. Such a disaster.

Here's a chart showing California housing production. It's a pretty big failure over the past 15 years or so:

https://bendyimby.com/2018/11/03/california/

Plenty of houses in Detroit.

This isn’t really the root of the problem through. The government can’t get more housing through because the voters don’t want it, the voters don’t want it because the traffic is already bad enough and there is nowhere to build more roads, and they don’t consider taking the bus or funding more public transit. And even if you climb that hump you become New York City or Shanghai, both of which are plenty dense with public transit but still not affordable at all.

Seriously, without Singapore-style public housing, you just aren’t going to solve this problem in any reasonable way. But that would ruin housing as a good investment outside of a small niche market at the super high end.

Californians did themselves no favors by shooting themselves in the foot with Prop 13. Normally localities would fund more services for growing populations by reaping the benefits of higher assessments.

> Housing cannot be both affordable and a good investment.

It certainly can be.

However, the combination of 0% Fed Interest Rate and low property tax rates kills the "affordable" side of that equation.

The 0% Fed Interest Rate means people can go way higher in mortgaging the hell out of themselves than if the rate was say 5%.

As for the property tax, raising the property tax rate limits the price of a home because even if someone could swing the down payment on a McMansion, the annual property tax payment would start biting into how good an investment it is. So, the developers would start building houses that assess at where the majority of buyers sit.

Of course, the same people who complain about getting gentrified also generally oppose raising property taxes even slightly. Oh well.

> 1. Housing cannot be both affordable and a good investment.

One is technically wrong. It can't be both a good investment and remain affordable. It can be both affordable and a good investment in the present, with prices rising over time generating a good return and making it increasingly unaffordable.

Sure. But that was 70 years ago in USA. The affordable housing ship has all but sailed for our generation.

Except apparently in tiny towns where we’re now ruining it for the locals.

In fairness, These aren't really tiny towns and haven't been for a generation. It's classic sunbelt boom-sprawl-puke. (Never mind Colorado isn't actually sunny at all.)

Colorado is reasonably sunny, just not in the winter when the sun sets before you've finished your first cup of coffee (I kid, it's at 4:30-5pm in the winter). At least here in Colorado Springs the sun set at 7:40pm today with our latest sunset being around 8:30pm in a couple months.

"... Over time" is usually implied in most policy proposals.

1. What's your point?

3. Sure it can. You can have a market governed by supply and demand. Lots of demand? Price increases. Price increases? Incentivises supply. More supply? That's great, it addresses the scarcity and prices will follow-suit.

Poor people priced out who have a right to housing? A rental cap is an intervention that directly impedes the free movement of the price up to a hard cap.

But a housing subsidy for low-income individuals, i.e. more money to spend on housing, does not change the fact that the market is still governed by supply and demand.

Housing prices with rent subsidies can still go up and down depending on demand. But the government taxes the rich, and redistributes money to the poor, allowing their purchasing power in the housing marketplace to be more equal than solely based on their own income.

This, combined with proper zoning laws (set more at a federal level to override local NIMBY powers) and limited red-tape, to allow construction levels to respond to increased prices and actually generate adequate supply, is a market-based system where the poor are getting their right to housing.

What's the alternative?

Besides, there's more housing than ever. The right to housing cannot be spoken about without also saying 'in particular places'. The average household size (people per house) has dropped every decade for a century, and the average home size has increased every decade for a century. The square foot per person has been growing and growing. Whatever housing crisis people talk about, they tend to completely ignore location. Yet you'll find plenty of people who speak about a right to affordable housing in NY or SV when it's a place where incomes are at the top 0.1% worldwide and there's easily 10x as many people (in the country, and 1000x worldwide) who want to live in such cities at an affordable price than there are homes to live. It's impossible to provide a right to housing to all in those locations with any policy anyone on any part of the political spectrum can think of.

Thanks, can be repeated enough. Cars and single family home sububanization are perhaps America's greatest 20th century self-inflicted wound.

I guess so. All time greatest will be Columbus's discovery of America.

That one wasn't "self-inflicted".