You are falsely assuming an equivalence between homeownership and residency. Renters and household dependents make up a significant portion of residents in large cities.

Canada and the UK have woeful housing shortages. They're not doing much, if any, better than the US is.

I'd guess that is the point of the comment. In the US we can blame zoning, NIMBYs, and car-centric society for housing problems. But what about those other countries? What's the reason there?

I suspect important drivers of home pricing are:

- Young people not getting married and starting a family right out of school, making average household size drop considerably

- Increased standards for construction and rental quality

- Everyone wants more space, houses are pushing twice the size they were 30+ years ago

I think these are more plausible than just zoning and cars. I'd guess those are only serious problems in a handful of very dense cities which are constrained geographically.

The household size issue will probably level out, you can't really go below 1. Lowering standards won't happen. But smaller homes might. Bring back starter homes.

Agree with all of it. I will give an example of place where in practice there is no NIMBYism, one can build more or less any shape or size of building depending on lot size. Apartments are priced as much as $200-250K which adjusted to purchasing power parity would be like 2 million dollar condo/home in US. Now they are suffering huge water shortage due to over exploitation of resources.

This is leading to people running away from the city[1]

1. https://www.deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/bengaluru/techi...

> What's the reason there?

The same. Canada's population grew by 3% last year but housing supply remains inelastic. Small developers have difficulty getting loans, zoning, NIMBYs sue projects, etc.

> I think these are more plausible than just zoning and cars.

It may be more complex than "just" zoning, but it's certainly more-so zoning than the conceit that people want larger houses. People want houses period.

Another thing to add is that Boomers would rather age in place than be shipped off to a nursing home until they require extensive care hard to administer in a non-hospital setting. There's nothing wrong with that sentiment, but it does somewhat restrict the housing inventory that otherwise would be freed when they downsize or move into a facility.

Based on what I have read, Canada is doing far, far worse than the USA - affordability problem up north is ridiculous.

How can you fix the incentives so locals actually want densification?

I always liked the idea of more local taxes rather than federal. Then the larger tax base would improve services or do a direct transfer.

The "old way" that nobody talks about is that part of the city would become a slum/shithole, drop in value, be gobbled up by redevelopers, and made into nicer/denser city.

But the other thing is that density is only the solution if you insist people live in certain areas - the US has experienced tremendous growth in many time in history, and not all of them were handled by densification.