It seems like incentivizing marriage and families again would go a long way. When everyone thinks they can and should be single, the housing requirements double.
I live alone in my house. It was built in the late 1940s. This house likely housed couples with children, 3-5 people, instead of the 1 it holds today.
Coupling up would reduce housing demand, and should in turn lower prices as availability increases.
> When everyone thinks they can and should be single, the housing requirements double.
In the circles I run in, most people who don't live with a romantic partner have at least two long-term roommates, mostly friends from college or made in adulthood. Several of these three to five person groups own detached homes together that no pair of them could possibly afford.
Famously, Shawnee, KS banned "co-living" a few years back, because (in the city council's opinion) too many people were living with others.
Interestingly, high housing costs should incentivize intersexual cooperation but they don't seem to be doing so. From observing revealed preferences, it seems a lot of young people would rather go back and live with mom and dad than get married at 22. This isn't to mention the tax breaks most people benefit from when they get married, which at US median incomes can add up thousands of dollars back in your pocket every year.
But it doesn't seem to be enough. The median age of first time marriage keeps creeping up and up. It's over 30 now in the US and higher in the EU.
The doubling of the standard deduction in Trump’s first term means interest isn’t deductible for practical purposes. Same thing with charitable donations!
Not sure what real tax breaks there is if both people make similar income. Otherwise if only one works, they’ll definitely see lower taxes thanks to the doubling of the standard deduction (plus exemption for the spouse).
Can you elaborate on that? Are you saying we're doing kids a favor by having them grow up with single parents, because that will force more housing to be built, so they can grow up and be single parents too? Is this a good future for them?
I get the population will still grow, and we will likely still need some amount of housing growth over time, but we don't need nearly as much as we think we do.
We also don't need to avoid the middle of the country. The population has been moving to the coasts, while the Midwest has lost a ton of people since the manufacturing moved elsewhere. With a lot of companies, there is no reason they can't be in the midwest where there are a lot more affordable homes, and a lot of space. We should be looking to draw people from these HCOL areas to help bring back these cities. It seems like a win-win situation.
> With a lot of companies, there is no reason they can't be in the midwest where there are a lot more affordable homes, and a lot of space.
I would argue that if they aren’t there now, there probably is a reason that you are overlooking.
If you need non-remote employees at all (and if you don’t, where the company is located with regard to housing doesn’t mean anything), then there is a cost to not locating where people with the skills you want currently are, and also a cost to not locating in a place where the people you want to hire would want to be.
> We should be looking to draw people from these HCOL areas to help bring back these cities. It seems like a win-win situation.
I’m sure when you just state it as a goal without a concrete plan or costs, it seems that way: we should just wave a magic wand and make people’s preferences changed so what isn’t in demand is in more demand and what is in demand os in less demand. Simple!
When you try to come up with w concrete plan to do that is when it becomes more problematic.
> We should be looking to draw people from these HCOL areas to help bring back these cities.
This is one of the arguments for high-speed rail. The primary reason to move to a HCOL city is employment opportunities. The rapid growth of rail, both street cars and commuter trains, early last century allowed metropolitan regions to expand by allowing people to work downtown but live further away, dramatically easing housing pressure. The advent of the interstate highway system originally had a similar effect, though later also a fracturing effect, especially outside the few cities capable of holding their core.
High-speed rail promises to achieve the same thing, just as it has elsewhere around the world. Certainly it's a promise CAHSR is selling, and a major reason we should strongly support it. And it's one of the primary justifications it runs through the Central Valley rather than taking the shortest route between SF and LA. It puts Central Valley cities squarely into the SF and LA metro regions, not only creating opportunities for existing Central Valley residents, but allowing people to move further out, reducing housing pressure. You simply can't achieve the same thing with bigger airports and more flights, not until flying cars become ubiquitous.
Even if CAHSR is built as planned (I have my doubts about that) it won't be practical for people to live in the Central Valley and commute to the Bay Area for work. It will just take too long to drive to the local rail station, ride to one of the three planned Bay Area stations, and then transfer to some other public transit to get to work.
What we ought to do is encourage more economic development and business growth in the Central Valley instead of trying to cram more and more stuff into the Bay Area. The infrastructure there is already overloaded, and it's geographically constrained by water and mountains.
A quick look at a topographic map of California suggests HSR through the Central Coast would be significantly more expensive, especially the southern half. Moreover, the Central Valley has more than 3x the population and significantly more land available for expansion, presumably in large part because of the topography. Also, I believe there are more Federal forest lands a Central Coast route would have to get through, which in retrospect might have proven a fatal choice.
Paralleling I-5 seems like a much stronger argument, though I'm not sure that would have been better and it may have never gotten off the ground at all. For one thing, Stockton, Fresno, and Bakersfield might not have supported CAHSR if it bypassed them. But also, AFAIU, Federal funding was contingent on following the routes laid out in the national high-speed rail plan drawn up in the 1990s, and the recommended California line went through the big Central Valley cities.
What's really held back CAHSR has been the law suits and related dithering (e.g. environmental reviews more prolonged because of the expected law suits). That sapped momentum, and momentum is everything; time is money. That loss of momentum also means CAHSR is having a much harder time getting over the humps, literally (tunneling through the mountains) and figuratively (financial support for the tunneling). If construction had proceeded as fast as it has in most other countries, people wouldn't be perennially debating the chosen CAHSR route.
Japan calls those super commuters. I thought it would be too expensive, but after some searching it seems to be a very common thing. I really wouldn't want to live that life though.
There are not enough houses, and you are encouraging more long-term demand for houses…
> We also don't need to avoid the middle of the country. The population has been moving to the coasts
Maybe a better question to ask yourself is why people prefer living on the coasts. What government policies draw them from the cheap places to the expensive places? How can you copy those policies to convince people to move back?
I think a stronger push for WFH for those jobs that can obviously support it can solve a lot of problems. The federal government was leading the way before Trump, I feel like we are heading backwards in a lot of ways in the last 6 months (toward the 1950s and not the 2050s), but there are actual real solutions that we are just refusing to pursue.
I live alone in my house. It was built in the late 1940s. This house likely housed couples with children, 3-5 people, instead of the 1 it holds today.
Coupling up would reduce housing demand, and should in turn lower prices as availability increases.