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IdlyCurious t1_ixufwcy wrote

Reply to comment by Sentsuizan in For most Americans, housing was a key component in personal wealth accumulation. However, racist housing policies eroded black wealth in pre-WWII American cities. Black families paid a 28% premium to buy a home on a majority white block, after which their homes lost 10% of their value. by smurfyjenkins

> Housing appreciates in value because there are more people year to year but the earth doesn't make more land year to year

I disagree - building and zoning regulations is the biggie in the United States. People who own houses do not want their houses to go down in value (or even remain the same). They do not want 10-story apartments in their neighborhood. They do not want 2-story apartments in their neighborhood. They do not want smaller lots and smaller houses in their neighborhood. And they are the ones with the ability to control local zoning laws.

Also, of course, they don't also don't want denser housing because they don't want increased traffic. But many people really don't want the neighborhood "going down hill" by having pretty much anyone with significantly less income than themselves living there.

Also, increasing urbanization means there's more demand in small area of space (while the rural areas away from everything have lower demand).

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Sentsuizan t1_ixugtru wrote

At the a macro level land is a finite resource no matter what. It's a complex subject and our statements are definitely not mutually exclusive.

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lawstudent2 t1_ixv2ezx wrote

Dude America is enormous and empty.

Housing has skyrocketed in price due to people all wanting to live in the same populated areas. If access to land mass solved the issue, there would be no housing crisis.

But it doesn’t, and there is.

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scarabic t1_ixv9oyc wrote

I live in California, where housing is insanely expensive. We are not even close to exhausting the available land as a resource for this. It is much more an issue of development dollars, zoning restrictions, and economics. Finite land is not the reason.

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IdlyCurious t1_ixusgsi wrote

> At the a macro level land is a finite resource no matter what. It's a complex subject and our statements are definitely not mutually exclusive.

Eventually, yes. Now, no. There's plenty of housing available in places no one wants to live (Detroit a few years ago being a great example) and lots and lots of land available in rural areas (with few jobs), if people wanted to build there. The high prices are in desirable areas, and that's because of more people in those areas, not more people on earth. And more density would absolutely bring down the housing prices there (at least in the short term - the issue would be if lower prices increased demand/caused more people moved there).

It's very much an area of population and available housing in localized areas, not global landmass v global population at this point.

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Sentsuizan t1_ixut0nw wrote

Even if you qualify it to say only the desirable land for housing, that land is still a finite resource.

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lawstudent2 t1_ixv3bt9 wrote

Zoning makes it finite. Not landmass. NYC and SF could build enormous amounts of high density housing. But they aren’t, because of zoning laws.

So you are just not right.

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