Is there a housing bubble in ATL? (Atlanta, Dunwoody: affordable apartment, HOA)

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by travbo

r5

Thank you for the correction.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

And yet Tokyo has been growing population for quite a while now despite the country as a whole. Kind of like how, despite the hollowing out of rural America, Cities are continuing to grow.

Indeed. Tokyo has seen a staggering...15%...increase in population in the last 40 years.

Tokyo has managed to reduce overall housing prices despite a large increase in population.

Is a 15% increase in 40 years large?

I never said you get the same for your money, I said average housing prices go down.

Right. And if you built 100-square foot micro-apartments, the average cost would go down even more. Let's do that!

And I'm not suggesting to put a 50-story building in every neighborhood, but allowing triplexes, or even 5-story buildings should be the default.

Nope. In certain areas, yes, in certain areas, no.

Maybe you feel that way, but why should your feelings keep other people from having housing opportunities that they are willing to pay for?

Why should existing property owners have to cede the way to new people? Why do the new people get the say? Because "they want it"?

The key is to house people, not maximize the number of people in mansions and sprawling estates.

If they do that, then that's because there is demand for that. Hence, it is needed.

Thus, in your mind, absolutely nothing is off limits unless it has a historical reason for being there? No neighborhood should be able to decide if it wants to be torn up for incoming people?

Right, so let's constrict our city to put nearly double the current population into 25% of the land area. [i]Surely that will help reduce prices.

Manhattan is 22 square miles and houses four times the resident population of the city of Atlanta. That's 4 times as many people in 1/6th the area. Yeah..we absolutely can double our current population in 25% of the space. A huge amount of downtown is undeveloped. A huge amount south of I-20 is undeveloped or way-underdeveloped (abandoned factories and strip malls). A huge amount of northwest Atlanta is undeveloped. It can easily be done without crying about out SFH neighborhoods being racist or discriminatory.

Property owners have every right to maintain their neighborhoods and their properties.

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe the people of Inman Park might like the new restaurants, or shops, or even offices that adding a new mixed-use development would bring?

And if the people of Inman Park want that, then they absolutely should be able to approve the changes. But, if the neighbors in Inman Park do not want to have their beautiful neighborhood broken up with low-rent micro-apartments, who are you to tell them "too bad...what I want is more important"? There is a commercial area in Inman Park which has already been built up, and that's great. But those who have invested back in the SFH home areas should be able to protect their neighborhood as they see fit. Saying that new people should get the say how the existing neighborhood is ripped apart and changed is the epitome of arrogance.

I can be pissed off about it, but the only real ground I have to stand on would be if the use of space was too low-density, due to the waste of potential.

Really...so if someone's nice quiet back yard now backs up to the loading dock of a new fish market, they have no right to be upset about it, because the space is now apparently used better? Is this real life?

Again, were the case as you present it, then the city could simply rezone the entire area to be multi-family, without any new improvements to the land or any increase in need for that land to be developed, and supposedly be able to reap far more taxes than before.

In my opinion, every industrial lot inside the perimeter could be rezoned high density and that would be great. Anywhere with seas of parking lots can also be rezoned. And certain undeveloped areas and areas along major corridors. Will never agree, under any circumstance that you can dream up, that the whole area should be rezoned as such.

It's more affordable than the $15-$18 Million than was there, and reduces housing pressure overall, which means aggregate prices drop, or at least slow compared to if that supply wasn't added.

362 $1.3 million units are not going to bring the average housing cost down more than one $18 million home.

10,000 homes at $500k + one home at $18 million = $501,749 average.
10,000 homes at $500k + 362 homes at $1.3 million = $527,948 average.

The only way you're going to bring average housing costs down is if the new units are far below the average current cost of housing.

See, there's no issue with you choosing housing for your personal tastes. The issue, though, is imposing your personal taste to the detriment of the wider city.

So, again, in your opinion, property owners should have absolutely no say about their neighborhood. It's the new people who get the say.

Many of the areas that people want to encase in amber right now have, themselves, changed significantly in the past few decades. My dad still tells of times when our home in Virginia Highland was not in a good part of town. Of when the shops down on the intersection were shady as all hell (or just gay bars, I have a hard time telling with my dad at times...), but then things changed, and that was good.

This wasn't done by razing the neighborhood and filling it with mid-rise apartment buildings.

The same goes for places like Midtown, or Old Fourth Ward, which have seen even more dynamic and drastic changes for the better.

Core areas perfectly suited for this type of development.

You are free to choose where you want to live and by what standards you want to live there. You are not free to dictate to others that the places they want to live can not be built (with obvious exceptions to public health, public safety, and environmental integrity).

BS...I am absolutely free to join with my neighbors and keep our neighborhood as it is if it is what we want. You have absolutely no right to tell other people how their neighborhood should be. None. Zero. Zilch. This is especially true if you don't live there. Just like you don't get to start telling everyone else how a business should operate on your first day.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

If [developers would buy the one bad home in a nice SFH neighborhood and build a 10-unit apartment building on that lot just to make a quick profit], then that's because there is demand for that. Hence, it is needed.

I would respectfully disagree. The fact that a developer can do something for a quick profit doesn't mean it it is needed.

There are a lot of factors that go into property values and density is just one of them. Increased density may result in lower or higher prices.

As others have mentioned, there's also the matter of stability. Will people invest heavily in a neighborhood that could easily turn into a mess tomorrow?

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

Indeed. Tokyo has seen a staggering...15%...increase in population in the last 40 years.

You said that the country's population was stagnant or falling, as if that were an extension to the demand for the city's housing. Tokyo was the city of topic, you tried to tie it to the dropping population of the country as a whole, despite its own population growth.

Try not to move the goal posts too much.

Is a 15% increase in 40 years large?

It was a gain of 1.82 Million people between 1975 and 2015, which is actually a bit closer to 16% than 15%. So, they absorbed nearly four times the population of our city over that time. I'd say they have it figured out. Especially since, at least in the past 15ish years, housing prices have gone down despite a population increase of 1.43 Million people.

That's right, most of Tokyo's 40-year growth occurred at the same time that average housing prices fell.

Right. And if you built 100-square foot micro-apartments, the average cost would go down even more. Let's do that!

I mean, yeah, sure. Who are you to tell people they aren't allowed to pay for that if they want to? It doesn't cause a health or safety or environmental issue for you or the public at large.

The goal is to house people in a way they can afford it, not to force people to some arbitrary standard of living that is dictated by your personal opinion of those standards.

Nope. In certain areas, yes, in certain areas, no.

Because of some arbitrary standard of intangible, subjective 'character' with no grounding in reality what so ever? Please. I'm trying to house people, you are trying to dictate useless aesthetics. You're ready to choose and pick who gets to bear the burden of what you don't want, while I try not to be the arbiter of 'character' to dictate from on high what places may or may not grow.

After all, your choice of character is just as arbitrary as mine is, so let's let the need of the people in general dictate the growth of housing rather than subjective feelings.

Why should existing property owners have to cede the way to new people? Why do the new people get the say? Because "they want it"?

Because existing property owners don't own others' property. They own their own, and no more. Even more so, because they would not be ceding anything that actually causes them damage of health, safety, or environment. By contrast, their reluctance to allow even modest density increases has very real and tangible effects on prices, pushing people out of the very neighborhoods you want to preserve the character.

Ironically, that in and of itself, changes the character.

The key is to house people, not maximize the number of people in mansions and sprawling estates.

Oh look, I agree! Though, I think that was a quote error on your part more than a statement of support.

Thus, in your mind, absolutely nothing is off limits unless it has a historical reason for being there? No neighborhood should be able to decide if it wants to be torn up for incoming people?

I am not so arrogant as to assume that my definition of character is the correct one to impose on vast swaths of the city, which is why I simply want to allow the whole range of options, and let the collective actions of many, many people yield what it will.

Then again, a neighborhood adding apartments is not being torn up. It is literally being added to and made into more. More people, more shops, more amenities. The literal opposite of torn up.

Manhattan is 22 square miles and houses four times the resident population of the city of Atlanta. That's 4 times as many people in 1/6th the area. Yeah..we absolutely can double our current population in 25% of the space. A huge amount of downtown is undeveloped. A huge amount south of I-20 is undeveloped or way-underdeveloped (abandoned factories and strip malls). A huge amount of northwest Atlanta is undeveloped. It can easily be done without crying about out SFH neighborhoods being racist or discriminatory.

Property owners have every right to maintain their neighborhoods and their properties.

While you are right in that those densities are not necessarily exceptional, they usually accompany a much smoother transition than what you want to set up, and are surrounded by areas of much more similar densities rather than a sudden change to extremely low density.
You know, then entire topic of missing-middle housing.

Attempting to truly relegate as many people as you are suggesting into as little a percentage of the city as you are suggesting will simply drag the whole potential growth scenario down, ensuring that we would still not meet demand.

When cities grow in a healthy way, it is not by quarantining that growth into singular areas, it is by letting growth naturally occur across the area.

And if the people of Inman Park want that, then they absolutely should be able to approve the changes. But, if the neighbors in Inman Park do not want to have their beautiful neighborhood broken up with low-rent micro-apartments, who are you to tell them "too bad...what I want is more important"? There is a commercial area in Inman Park which has already been built up, and that's great. But those who have invested back in the SFH home areas should be able to protect their neighborhood as they see fit. Saying that new people should get the say how the existing neighborhood is ripped apart and changed is the epitome of arrogance.

Why do they get to dictate the future use? How many of those people are even Atlanta natives? How many were there when the east side was not a good place to live? What percentage were there for the whole fight, and truly put in their sweat and blood to make it?

How many just moved in and want to keep it encased in amber because they just happened to move into a nice area? They got theirs, now forget about everyone else who needs a home.

Saying that people who, for the large parts, did not even build the neighborhood they live in, get to shut out those who would come after them is epitome of hypocrisy and selfishness. To insist that you are the arbiter of vast systems of complex workings because you like the 'character' of the areas is, point of fact, being the arrogant one.

Especially when 'being ripped apart' is the literal opposite of what you insist it to be.

Really...so if someone's nice quiet back yard now backs up to the loading dock of a new fish market, they have no right to be upset about it, because the space is now apparently used better? Is this real life?

I would be quite surprised if there was such a thing to happen here in Atlanta, given that we are not known for our vast fisheries. That said, no they wouldn't, especially if that fish market didn't pollute their land, nor cause safety risks to them.

Heck, they may like the idea of being able to walk to get fresh fish.

In my opinion, every industrial lot inside the perimeter could be rezoned high density and that would be great. Anywhere with seas of parking lots can also be rezoned. And certain undeveloped areas and areas along major corridors. Will never agree, under any circumstance that you can dream up, that the whole area should be rezoned as such.

Again, I don't pretend to be the arbiter of 'character', and force my aesthetic opinions onto entire swaths of the city. Not when we have people who need housing.

362 $1.3 million units are not going to bring the average housing cost down more than one $18 million home.

10,000 homes at $500k + one home at $18 million = $501,749 average.
10,000 homes at $500k + 362 homes at $1.3 million = $527,948 average.

The only way you're going to bring average housing costs down is if the new units are far below the average current cost of housing.

That is a fair point. Ignoring all I said about that project not being Condos, you are right about the average unit of housing not going down in cost.

Then again, when you look at the price per person...

((10,000 * $500,000) + (1 * $18,000,000)) / ((10,000 homes * 3 people) * (1 home * 3 people)) = $616.61/person

((10,000 * $500,000) + (365 * $1,300,000)) / ((10,000 homes * 3 people) * (362 home * 3 people)) = $58.83/person

So you're right, in this instance the specific instance the average prices don't go down per unit. They do go down per person, though.

Oh, and let's set up a different scenario, and see what that does (this is Buckhead after all):

10,000 homes at $2 million + one home at $18 million = $2.001,600 average per unit.
10,000 homes at $2 million + 362 homes at $1.3 million = $1,975,545 average per unit.

Oh, well, look at that. Suddenly the new homes do lower the average. Isn't math fun!

So, again, in your opinion, property owners should have absolutely no say about their neighborhood. It's the new people who get the say.

They should have as much say as they can own their own property, and so they can ensure health, safety, and environmental integrity in quantifiable, statistically significant ways.

The new people have just as much say.

This wasn't done by razing the neighborhood and filling it with mid-rise apartment buildings.

Some of it certainly was done by replacing existing properties with newer ones, mid-rise apartments and McMansians alike.

Core areas perfectly suited for this type of development.

And they will see the majority of the growth by the simple reality of that statement, without us attempting to force development out of the rest of the city.

BS...I am absolutely free to join with my neighbors and keep our neighborhood as it is if it is what we want. You have absolutely no right to tell other people how their neighborhood should be. None. Zero. Zilch. This is especially true if you don't live there. Just like you don't get to start telling everyone else how a business should operate on your first day.

You have the right to do so with your own personal property.

I find it ironic that you are telling me that I can't tell people how their neighborhood should be, when it is actually you who are picking and choosing whose neighborhood gets to be encased in amber and whose neighborhood gets to absorb the oh-so-'damaging' density that you fear.

I do not want to tell anyone what their neighborhood should be, but rather simply allow all possibilities, and let the future be what it will based on the chaotic nature of many humans' individual needs and tastes.

Originally Posted by arjay57

I would respectfully disagree. The fact that a developer can do something for a quick profit doesn't mean it it is needed.

There is very little quick about developing land and selling homes, and, as I've pointed out before just a few posts earlier, the profits are not nearly as high as you would want to believe.

There are people who need housing and can afford it, and there are people who have the means to build it. I am just trying to let as many of both side do what they can to satisfy the other. If profit is made in the mean time, I see zero problem with that. After all, profit is the entire point of a capitalist system, one of which you live in.

There are a lot of factors that go into property values and density is just one of them. Increased density may result in lower or higher prices.

While true, demand for that land is the primary drive. You can affect the things that change demand, but, at the end of the day, demand is the driver of price.

The only way density increases will lower values in aggregate is by surpassing that demand with more supply.

After all, low-density may loose value all on its own too, as we can see in any dying small town.

As others have mentioned, there's also the matter of stability. Will people invest heavily in a neighborhood that could easily turn into a mess tomorrow?

If they want a stagnant place, then they shouldn't have moved to one of the top ten metros in the country.

[brown_dog_us]

I wonder if wealthy people would buy and invest in property that wasn't protected by zoning?

[aslowdodge]

Back where I am from in California it was a pretty nice area. Rolling golden hills with oak trees. One of my liberal friends was having a fit because of all the new housing being built. Much of it was fairly hi density. I used to tease her and tell here she was getting worked up over nothing.
A few years down the road the hills are no longer beautiful, but saturated with homes with zero lot lines and multistory condos. No hills, just multistory building wedged together. Yes you can house more people, but then they need to spend over 1/2 million for the condos. The houses are way more. It's ugly and the traffic and crowds are pretty bad.
I hate to say it but she was right.
From what I've seen in Atlanta there are some nice neighborhoods with great character and you can see why they would be popular and in demand. If you started to cram in hi density, I think those areas would lose their appeal and desirability. Atlanta might become one giant concrete jungle with too many people in one area.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by arjay57

I would respectfully disagree. The fact that a developer can do something for a quick profit doesn't mean it it is needed.

There are a lot of factors that go into property values and density is just one of them. Increased density may result in lower or higher prices.

As others have mentioned, there's also the matter of stability. Will people invest heavily in a neighborhood that could easily turn into a mess tomorrow?

You know, the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that you've actually gotten to the core of the topic: personal home value.

Now, some of y'all speak of a fear of loosing things like character, but what does that mean? Someone can give me some hand-wavy stuff about the feel of the neighborhood, or it's quaintness, or its quietness, or whatever, but what the 'character' really is, is a manifestation of an individual's want to live there. It is an internal metric that's fairly unquantifiable, yet results in one person willing to buy into the area in a very quantifiable way.

Get enough people together who like the 'character' of the neighborhood, and you get the overall demand for living there, which, in-turn, drives the property values.

If there are enough homes, at the current values, to satisfy everyone who wants to live there, then there's no issue. Property values don't go up, but neither does anyone go without a home. Then again, why should any individual want that? They bought a home, and have been lied to a bunch, and so think that a home must be a guaranteed return on investment. There must be some profit out of it, otherwise how could they hope to retire!?

Now, the person may be worried that the specific things that they liked about an area are necessary to keep people moving in. They aren't correct, of course, since there are enough varieties of people to enjoy most new things that would come to the area. After all, a new cafe wouldn't have come in if the owners didn't think they could get enough customers to make it work. Still, though, the person feels as if they must preserve the original neighborhood's elements without changing them at all to maintain their resale value.

On the other hand, they may be more blunt about it, and simply not want any new houses built to explicitly create a shortage.

Either way, demand is not met because that person, and a bunch of their neighbors who are thinking the same, get together to force laws into place that restrict the ability to build new things to meet the demand to live in the area. They operate under the idea that they have some kind of right to control the future of the neighborhood without consideration to those who's future they're affecting.

Well, things go great, for a while. Values go up, and most of the maturing people, who are well-along in their careers, can afford the rising taxes. A few poorer members get priced out and are forced to sell, but so what? They get a nice pay-check and a lovely new young couple moves in. Of course... that new couple is making quite a bit more money than the existing residents were when they were that age (even adjusted for inflation). Oh well, who cares?

Time goes on, and the city grows, adding more and more jobs. More people want to live in the neighborhood, but there's not enough new housing for them, so prices keep going up. More people are priced out, or simply choose on their own to sell. The only people who can buy into the area are the more and more wealthy. Those few houses which are allowed to be torn down are rebuilt bigger, and more fancy than any of the original homes, though, to meet the tastes of the rising income levels wanting to move into the neighborhood.

New shops and boutiques open in the area, buying out the existing commercial space since the lack of new commercial area means leases have gone up, and the long-running stores that were there can no longer keep up with prices. Those existing residents, and many of the earlier new arrivals, don't mind. They can afford the new places, after all.

Still no new housing, and no new commercial space is allowed, for fear that it would change the neighborhood. Ignore, however, that the average incomes are rising, the new houses are much larger than older ones, that shops are being replaced, and that change is already here.

Eventually, demand goes so unmet that a developer can justify the high costs needed to fight the neighbors and the laws they had put in place. The developer can justify the millions extra they must spend for parking garages, and meeting community aesthetic standards, and sacrificing land to unneeded set backs, and dedicating land to 'green space' that is unneeded due to the near-by neighborhood park, and sitting through the layers of beuocracy and meetings and review boards and public comment periods. Eventually, after much fussing and cussing, a new apartment complex is built. The only apartments that can be built and still turn a profit are 'luxury' units. High cost, minimal real luxury, but they get filled regardless as only a small portion of the pent-up demand is met.

Of course there are those who don't want the complex because it threatens their incorrect assumptions about the 'character' needing to be preserved at all costs to maintain values. After all, there are enough people who want to live in the apartments to justify building the thing in the first place, and that the new cafes and shops built on its bottom floor offer more options for potential home-owners to go out and do things, meaning values will be fine.

There will be those, though, who don't want it simply because they fear that it will lower their return on investment. If the demand is met, after all, then values stop going up. If more demand is met than has to be, then prices don't go up as much as they could, and then existing property owners get less money than they could.

There will even be those who come at things from the other direction. Who see the expensive apartments, without seeing the train of events leading to them, and inaccurately blame the developers for the high prices. They will call the developer greedy and blame them for not building more affordable units.

All three, though, will agree that new developments must be restricted further, either for the character, or to 'help the little man', or to just further pad out their retirement funds.

None of this would be so bad if it were relegated to a few neighborhoods, but when done city-wide, or at least over large-swaths of the city, you create a scenario where the average prices can't help but rise. New people coming to the city must be able to pay more and more and more on average to be able to live there.

As the neighborhoods' character continues to change, no matter what some may say to the contrary, the city becomes less and less available to more and more people. Those who could have otherwise afforded to live in the city - near its services, and amenities, and resources - are now relegated further and further away. They are trapped by lengthening commutes, rising transportation costs, and fewer support resources within reach. Those who are least able to afford it, are either burdened with higher costs of living further away or the higher costs of rising housing prices. In many cases, depending on the metro's policies as a whole, they can easily find themselves trapped in both.

That's okay, though, because some people got to pretend that they defended their neighborhood's character, and that it's okay to restrict supply so much. It's just a coincidence that they're personally getting paid better for their efforts. At least, they'll get paid better as long as there are rich people to buy in, but there's no shortage of those, right? Certainly no long-term sustainability issues are being built in by keeping people trapped in situations where it's much harder for them to build wealth, coupled with over all slow, or in some cases stagnant, wage growth.


This is all actually quite ironic, actually, when it's circled back to your first statement of vilifying people making a profit. If the goal of a home-owner is to be able to eventually sell their property for a profit, then are they themselves not just as bad, or even much worse than the developer you lament? After all, the developer can only really deal with what's in place when they build. It's the residents and citizens who set the long-term policies that ensure their personal gain over others'.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by brown_dog_us

I wonder if wealthy people would buy and invest in property that wasn't protected by zoning?

No one here, not I nor even jsvh, is suggesting to get rid of all zoning laws. We still need basic things that maintain health, safety, and environmental integrity.

Those are all you really need, though, to make things functional beyond the basic supporting infrastructure.

Originally Posted by aslowdodge

Back where I am from in California it was a pretty nice area. Rolling golden hills with oak trees. One of my liberal friends was having a fit because of all the new housing being built. Much of it was fairly hi density. I used to tease her and tell here she was getting worked up over nothing.
A few years down the road the hills are no longer beautiful, but saturated with homes with zero lot lines and multistory condos. No hills, just multistory building wedged together. Yes you can house more people, but then they need to spend over 1/2 million for the condos. The houses are way more. It's ugly and the traffic and crowds are pretty bad.
I hate to say it but she was right.
From what I've seen in Atlanta there are some nice neighborhoods with great character and you can see why they would be popular and in demand. If you started to cram in hi density, I think those areas would lose their appeal and desirability. Atlanta might become one giant concrete jungle with too many people in one area.

Wait, so, because there were enough people who wanted to live there to justify the buildings and developments, the developments shouldn't have been built? Because you don't like the way they look?

California has a huge housing shortage, they need more housing, not less. Keeping those developments from being built would have just driven up prices elsewhere. Keeping towers from being built would have just lead to more sprawl.

For the sake of fiscal equity, and environmental protection, increasing density is a policy that any self-described liberal should be taking on.

[aslowdodge]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

No one here, not I nor even jsvh, is suggesting to get rid of all zoning laws. We still need basic things that maintain health, safety, and environmental integrity.

Those are all you really need, though, to make things functional beyond the basic supporting infrastructure.





Wait, so, because there were enough people who wanted to live there to justify the buildings and developments, the developments shouldn't have been built? Because you don't like the way they look?

California has a huge housing shortage, they need more housing, not less. Keeping those developments from being built would have just driven up prices elsewhere. Keeping towers from being built would have just lead to more sprawl.

For the sake of fiscal equity, and environmental protection, increasing density is a policy that any self-described liberal should be taking on.

For some people they live in an area because they like the way it is. Add a ton of crowds and traffic and it changes. In some respects it loses some desirability. Most of the people that lived there for a long time already. Someone mentioned that most of the people in Atlanta are new and haven't lived there very long so they really have no say. If this is the case here, it isn't there.
So I guess the things that make Atlanta a neat place don't matter as long as you can cram as many people in there even if it destroys the character of the city?

Look at how fast housing is going up in the Bay area. I can't say that all that hi density housing kept the prices down. Al the new stock was priced at the top tier of pricing.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by aslowdodge

For some people they live in an area because they like the way it is. Add a ton of crowds and traffic and it changes. In some respects it loses some desirability. Most of the people that lived there for a long time already. Someone mentioned that most of the people in Atlanta are new and haven't lived there very long so they really have no say. If this is the case here, it isn't there.
So I guess the things that make Atlanta a neat place don't matter as long as you can cram as many people in there even if it destroys the character of the city?

Character is an ambiguous, intangible, subjective thing. It is the manifestation of what an individual personally likes about an area. There are more than enough people with a diverse enough set of personal preferences and life situations that will allow a huge variety of places to remain in demand even as they change.

We do not need to encase things in amber for them to stay desirable. Just because you don't like the way it looks does not mean many others won't, and that those many others won't want to live in the city even as the density increases.

Look at how fast housing is going up in the Bay area. I can't say that all that hi density housing kept the prices down. Al the new stock was priced at the top tier of pricing.

Just because a lot of housing is going in, does not mean that enough housing is going in. Not meeting demand means prices go up, even if new supply comes online. Overly restrictive zoning laws make new housing expensive to build, and require that any new housing can only be so cheap, artificially raising prices along with making it harder to meet demand, which itself raises prices.

After all, the San Francisco metro area added 4 jobs (306,814) for every unit of housing (75,236) that came online from 2012 through 2017.