I don't understand this comment, maybe you can expand. It makes sense to me that what is desirable for a primary residence would significantly overlap with what is desirable for rental, comfortable space, walkable to a city center, etc. Is your point that people should be more accommodating to the rental market? IMHO I think all cities should strongly regulate what can be a rental and add tax to homes when it is not occupied, prioritizing affordable permanent residence. This isn't just a "trendy city" problem, it's wide spread across the country.

I'm arguing that people should lower their standards. It should be easy to understand that not everyone can afford own property walking distance to the city center.

I fully agree with you on prioritizing primary residence.

Everyone can with smaller cities. Living in a megacity and expecting it is the problem.

How big of a city are you talking about? I live in a city of just over 50k and house prices have been an issue for years and keeps getting worse. It's the same for every "city" around this size that I've looked into. I've seen a town with <20k where house prices have more than doubled in the past 2 years. It's a bold statement to say everyone can afford to own a desirable home in even a smaller city.

“All over the country” doesn’t have good jobs, good schools, access to entertainment, etc.

But, I agree on the SFH part. The expectation that a 3000sqft house on 1/4 acre is the norm is completely unsustainable. Yet that seems to be what many people want. Even in high COL areas where demand and cost should be driving density.

There are absolutely good jobs in every city in America. Entertainment can mean anything...and frankly people should be able to find fun things to do on their own without needing bars, nightclubs, concert venues, etc.

I concede that good schools are a major barrier. I'm young and won't be having children anytime soon so I don't think about it much.

Where I live, the public schools are pretty rough. It's cheaper to stay here and send your kids to private school rather than move to a family dominated neighborhood with excellent public schools.

Every city, sure, but cities are expensive. Even cities that used to be affordable, like Portland and Austin. But between the cities? Not much. Some small towns might work if you’re the town lawyer or MD, but a town can only support so many of those. And if you’re an engineer or banker? Not much employment.

Portland and Austin are the very essence of "trendy city" those places are very expensive. I'm not arguing that people move to small towns. There are hundreds of cities in the US with 100,000+ populations (not even including the metro areas). The idea that each of these cities is unaffordable and without a job market is just wrong.

Everyone wants to live in NYC, SF, DC, Miami...etc because the other areas aren't cool enough for them.

Not for long. Salt Lake City was one such city just 3-5 years ago. Now everything has doubled and it's almost as expensive as the trendier cities, without the higher-paying jobs.

Well, you should just lower your standards when it comes to picking a job, too. Maybe you could be a grocery clerk or a gas station attendant?

Of course that's what people want. Because it beats the pants off a 1100 ft^2 condo or apartment with no private yard and shared walls/floors/ceilings in almost every regard of daily, lived experience.

I totally get why people want that; what I don't get is why they can't understand that so many other people also want it that most everyone will have to compromise on some aspect.

Not me. I just want mixed residential housing. Yeah, it’s not happening because America made that effectively illegal. We’re finally rolling some of that back, but it’s going to take decades to undo and by that time the shortage will continue.

Sorry man that sucks. I own a property that's effectively a duplex in Atlanta. My buddy owns a duplex in Denver. It's not everywhere that mixed residential homes are banned!

Are you in CA?

Normally when people talk about mixed-use development, they are talking about zoning rules that allow residential and commercial use in close proximity, not necessarily about forced single-family use (although that is also an issue in many places).

Ah I see I misunderstood. FWIW though there's businesses scattered all over my neighborhood and seemingly no zoning rules. Lots of folks, especially the ones on this forum, would probably not live in Atlanta simply because of their perception of the city.

Atlanta has the advantage of being an old city, relative to the US's history of development. It certainly has its own issues with post-WWII development (especially in its sprawly areas), but the older parts have retained lots of the perks of pre-automobile urbanization.

In California, there's currently a fight between the state government, which wants cities to allow more housing, and local governments, which are opposed to higher density housing because the NIMBYs ("not in my back yard") fight it. The restrictive zoning laws are at the local level, not the state level.

> The restrictive zoning laws are at the local level, not the state level.

True, but the restrictive zoning laws are made possible at the state level.

A thread here on HN a few weeks ago mentioned Japan which they described as having basically 5 classifications for "types of things you can do on land you own", ranging from "essentially anything at all" to "notable limitations". Within whatever classification your land is given, you can do whatever you want, local neighborhood be damned.

I don't know if that's an accurate description, but it sounds like a system with a very different set of tradeoffs than the one found across the USA.

Are there jobs near those houses? Specialist doctors? Good schools?

I WFH so I could probably buy one of those houses, but most of my friends in my age bracket are expected to show up to an office 5 days a week, so those suitable houses are no good for them.

Yeah those are good points. I live in a bit of a bubble where most folks around me either WFH or have to travel to work. There are absolutely "specialist doctors" in every large city though...

You might be surprised how hard it is to actually find specialists, even in big cities. In the SF bay area for example for a couple different procedures I had done in the last decade there were perhaps 3 specialists in the whole area who could do it, far enough from me that I had to book a hotel room to stay in closer to the facility and avoid 4+ hours of driving.

A family friend was diagnosed with a difficult brain tumor, and to get it removed via a (if memory serves, this was a while ago) gamma knife procedure, he had to drive 6+ hours north from a relatively large mid-california city up to Sacramento because we had one of the only facilities equipped for it there at the time.

In general people often will get transported to other hospitals for treatment, often multiple hours or even across state lines. Now imagine that you have to do this multiple times a month because you moved to a less-urban area due to housing prices...

Is my family there? My church? The park where I learned to play soccer? My daughter's best friend?

When you sit around talking about choice of living area without weighing, or even acknowledging these connections, do you realize how inhuman this sounds? Do you not have similar things binding you to a place?

Shit even specialist doctors, have you ever depended on one? If you're needing long-term specialist care you got some major shit to deal with. Rapport, trust, history with an individual doctor is an important part of that care. And people need care aside from just the doctors. Who is driving you to these appointments, caring for you afterwards? Are they coming to the new city with you?

There are a lot of things in a place you know. You can't reduce all or really very many of them down to mere transactions in a marketplace.

I feel you. It’s horrible if you’ve grown up somewhere and suddenly can’t afford a home in the same spot.

But life’s unfair. Houses get sold to the highest bidder. This is what happens when everyone wants to live in the same areas. I’m not arguing that you SHOULDNT be able to afford a home in your preferred spot. I’m observing that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for everyone to own property in their preferred spot within their budget.

You can still rent, or buy cheaper homes in cheaper areas in your city.

We can’t just will affordable housing into existence when ~97% of people live on ~3% of the land.

If you work from home you go to good remote schools and see the best doctors remotely.

+1 GP is top 2% of their generation but not necessarily top 2% of the area they're looking into. Sounds fairer when put that way.

Yes. The problem is:

1. A lot of high earners want to cram into a small space

2. The existing high earners living in that space don't want to allow more built in that space because they like the neighborhood how it is

So all these high earners compete against each other, and houses become as expensive the winning high-earning bidders can afford.

For this to stop happening, #1 or #2 needs to stop. So, either the high earners need to stop cramming into a small space, or policy must be changed so the locals can't stop the growth of housing supply.

(Usually when I've pointed this out in the past, I get mobbed by NIMBYs who insist that growing the housing supply will somehow cause prices to skyrocket even more. There seems to be a widespread NIMBY belief that standard economics doesn't apply to housing, for mysterious reasons that no one ever quite gets around to explaining. It'll be interesting to see if it happens again today.)

Per-unit rent will go down if you increase supply of housing, but the value of the land underneath will go up if you increase the amount of houses allowed to be built on said land. There's one part of "standard economics" that a lot of people forget with property, which is that land in desirable locations is of limited supply and you cannot increase its supply.

Land at the boundaries of a city is not equivalent with land in the centre, because of location value.

I do agree that #2 should stop, but be warned that it doesn't solve land values going sky-high; it actually increases land values. The solution is land value tax, a la Henry George.

> but the value of the land underneath will go up if you increase the amount of houses allowed to be built on said land.

which is what would incentivize the owner of that land (ostensibly a single family home land owner) to sell and let high density to be built. If the land doesn't increase in value this way, the owner would not have any incentive to sell.

It can happen because new homes are more expensive. People prefer new and will pay more. That raises the average price which raises prices on the existing supply.

Or it lowers price on the existing supply because wealthier buyers are going to the new supply now rather than bidding up the existing supply.