The housing crisis thread
 

If only we all could afford multimillion dollar homes we could all buy or rent in super urban, beautiful, safe neighborhoods served by world class transit!

I'm sure you're being facetious, but most of the world manages to develop in more compact ways. It's sad that this country doesn't do far better, particularly the Houston/Dallas/Atlanta type.

My brother in law lives in the suburbs north of Austin and commutes 20+ miles to work. Funny enough though, with Miami's traffic his 20+ mile Austin suburban commute is probably shorter than my 5 mile Miami commute.

I knew one person in the LA area who lived in Palmdale and worked in LA, and one who worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab but lived at least 2 hours away, (I think in Irvine). I think both said that they woke at around 4am and left for work no later than 5 am to get to work by 7am or 8am. I remember one Houston telling me that the Woodlands was 'way out there' as if it was the hinterlands and one Dallas person saying the same thing about Plano a few years back.

MIDWEST!

The housing crisis is local.

Not national.



But ya gotta deal with some ewwww.

Most people are idiots.

As always.

This commute discussion is making me feel pretty good about where I live. Even being 8 miles out from city center, I can walk to the MAX from my suburban home and get to downtown Beaverton in 10 minutes, downtown Hillsboro in 20 minutes, and downtown Portland in 30 minutes. Since they extended the Red Line west, my station is now served by both Red and Blue, which means headways are every 7.5 minutes and I can get all the way to PDX without a transfer. Still, I wish it were faster, but it is what it is.

The country is doing better; Houston/Dallas/Atlanta are doing better but you can't undo 50 years of laissez faire urban planning or ignore the realities of the housing market and socio-economics.

Cities are getting more infill, but they're still sprawling like crazy in areas without decent growth management.

Growth management puts constraints on housing and ultimately impacts affordability.

Wildlife ranch? Was that one of those places stocked with wild animals from different parts of the world where people could hunt them for a fee? Anyway, I live in Belton just south of Temple and apartment complexes and houses are going up here and it's been said that some of those moving in are people priced out of Austin moving north for cheaper alternatives.

I mean, 90% of the developed world lives in urban, safe neighborhoods served by good transit. I don't think it's expecting too much for the wealthiest nation in the history of humanity to have more than a handful of such places.

And there are a TON of urban, safe neighborhoods in the U.S., often served by good transit too, that are rejected by buyers with choices. You can get a beautiful home in Shaker Heights, OH for like 300k, which is just wrong considering the location, housing stock, beauty, transit, schools and services. Most people would rather pay 500k for a McCrapShack in the sticks.

As a society we didn't invest enough into high-capacity, rail based rapid transit which left us to depend heavily on roads and cars for population growth. For some reason we think we already need densely populated places with people using transit to demonstrate a need for subway systems but we don't apply that same standard to building roads. But this isn't logical, nor is it how we historically developed cities. Much of what is now the NYC subway system was actually developed in farmland and the city grew up around it.

No, it constrains LAND. The number of housing units on that land can be enormous and not very expensive -- if local policy allows.

The places with good growth management tend to limit density too much, add millions in fees, and pile on unnecessary design and code requirements. But that's not an inherent fact of growth managagement.

We don't have to settle for the sprawly model just for affordability.

Good point, and that would be nice, but the US funding model makes it impossible. It's all short-term cost/benefit, decided on a per-project basis. Only long-term ongoing capital funding would allow generational goals to take precedence.

The Midwest is definitely being impacted by the housing crisis. Albeit not nearly as severe as other places. But most Midwest major cities do not have enough homes.

I cannot think of one major Midwest metro that suffers from a major lack of housing. Maybe a few college towns, like AA or Madison. But there's no way in hell the big metros are starved of housing stock.

I thought the same thing based on population and census data, but hadn't considered all the relevant factors. If you just look at how stagnant Michigan's population has been over the last 25 years while taking into account the 400k or so more housing units they've added over that time, it seems crazy. However, it's more complicated than that. The adult population of Michigan has risen ~9% in that time, with median age jumping from 35.8 to 40.1, and thus household formations are up. Conversion of housing to vacation rentals has also caused issues. Listings are also way down as people don't want to give up their low interest rates. The Midwest is projected to continue to have supply and affordability issues in the coming years while much of the south is seeing prices drop.

The city of Detroit alone demolished about 30,000 houses and apartment buildings over the past decade. Add up demolitions from private entities and we're probably in the 40k - 50k range. If there is a housing shortage now then it's the result of bad governance.

lol okay if you say so? Try telling that to buyers and anybody looking for a place. Lots of folks cant afford shit and prices keep going up. Constant bidding wars for anything in the middle class market range.

Also nobody said anything about being "starved", like I said not nearly as bad as other places. But there's not enough housing for what's needed and it's only getting worse.

Homes continue to rot away in parts of Chicago and every other Rustbelt city.

There might be a shortage of housing in desirable locations, but that's a local issue, not a nationwide one.