Austin's Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents

Re:Austin's Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents by dan-robertson on Thursday March 19, 2026 @08:17AM (#47438060)

Isn’t the initial response to a lack of housing that people consume less housing than they would like, rather than homelessness, eg families with children sharing rooms more than they might like, adults living with roommates, or just people having to live further away from where they would like to be (or moving out of a city altogether)?

I don’t dispute that there are levels of affordability that are bad enough that they start to lead to various forms of homelessness, but it doesn’t seem to me like a fundamental rule that, if some people can’t afford to live alone in a large amount of housing, they also can’t afford to live with roommates sharing a smaller amount of housing, and that the right level of housing prices should also price some people out of those arrangements (ie it demands a pretty high level of inequality if you assume that the market allows typical people to afford to live alone and that sharing can typically reduce per-person rents by half or more)

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Re:Austin's Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents by polothesecond on Thursday March 19, 2026 @09:52AM (#47439457)

It’s all fun and games games until you’re municipality starts banning adult co-living situations.

You underestimate how intrusive these people will be to protect the value of the single largest asset most of them will ever own

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Re:Austin's Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents by chmod775 on Thursday March 19, 2026 @10:58AM (#47440620)

Individual landlords also dislike those and may not allow it, because the ability of the household to make rent now depends on all adults in that household. 3-4 broke adults who may only loosely know each other and with their own individual plans are a lot less stable than, for example, married couples. It's basically 3x the risk and hassle. Chances are you'd have to evict them after just a couple months.

They'd rather just leave the apartment empty and hope to find a better tenant.

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Re:Austin's Surge of New Housing Construction Drove Down Rents by rootusrootus on Thursday March 19, 2026 @12:36PM (#47442131)

> municipality starts banning adult co-living situations

Is that not typically happening only for more egregious situations? E.g. the ban is on more than 3 or 4 unrelated adults living together. There are plausible reasons why that should be regulated, it is not clearly a conspiracy by homeowners to prop up the value of their own homes.

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