Do you think we will ever have affordable housing again in our lifetime?

filister@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 470 points –

Considering how crazy expensive accommodations have become the last couple of years, concentrated in the hands of greedy corporations, landlords and how little politicians seem to care about this problem, do you think we will ever experience a real estate market crash that would bring those exorbitant prices back to Earth?

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Just keep building, and change zoning laws to make that easier.

Yesterday I caught this little tidbit from the Denver news as I walked through my company’s break room:

Consumers are facing a double whammy as housing is both too expensive and there’s not enough of it.

As someone who grew up before macroeconomics was declared evil and apparently purged out of higher education, it’s no mystery to me that a market with inadequate supply will have high prices.

I’m not necessarily familiar with the exact definition of “macroeconomics” in this context, and I’m far too young to understand the cultural nuances you describe.

But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take more that two brain cells to understand that the latter point is almost always the direct cause of the former.

It’s been 20 years since I took the class, but I think basically microeconomics is individual decision-making, and macroeconomics is market-level trends.

So an average market price over time is a macroeconomic model and a household’s maximum budget for groceries is a microeconomic model.

Supply and demand curves exist in macro.

What’s the deal with it being declared evil then? It makes a lot of sense.

Consumers are facing a double whammy as housing is both too expensive and there’s not enough of it.

oh Denver. It's been that way in Portland for several years now.