In some European countries population growth is only due to immigration. In Spain almost 19% of the population is foreign-born and annual population growth is >1%!
It's quite odd that everyone is concerned about the "housing crisis" but few people want to mention the biggest root cause, even here which is supposed to be about curiosity...
Housing problem comes from the job market. Cities with good jobs will attract people and the price of renting/buying will go as high as they can bear. Most of the benefit will go to landlords. Moving to a better job market will make you little benefit because your increased pay will be largely swallowed by the cost of housing.
The problem is that employers want their employees physically present at the office, and roads can only carry them so fast, so being closer to job opportunities will reflect on the housing cost. Maybe the solution would be to make workplaces more widespread, improve transportation to expand commute reach under 30-60 minutes, or support more remote work.
Population can't grow for ever. We'll need to learn to live with a constant population (and even decreasing for some time) at some point in any case...
European governments do not want to face this reality and prefer to try to convince people that immigration is good (polls show that the people increasingly disagree).
Nope. "Urbanist advocates" can create real estate bubbles even with a shrinking population.
Case in point: Tokyo. You just need to make sure you _have_ to live in The City, and that there are no other options for you. And a shrinking population makes that _easier_.
In some European countries population growth is only due to immigration. In Spain almost 19% of the population is foreign-born and annual population growth is >1%!
It's quite odd that everyone is concerned about the "housing crisis" but few people want to mention the biggest root cause, even here which is supposed to be about curiosity...