Okay, so if the 5 over 1s weren't being built, where would all of these "kids" live? Wherever they live, by your same argument, they would be willing to pay more than the existing locals and the existing locals would still be priced out.
Pricing people out is primarily an income/wealth disparity problem that arises when in-demand areas move suddenly.
Building less in those areas certainly would not help. But it's also unlikely that enough can be built to preserve space for all existing residents in any realistic time-frame without subsidies and active efforts (which some cities do better than others).
It's not just supply and demand. Expensive areas being expensive is partly by design.
Things like redlining are no longer legal, but the desire by people to exclude people that they do not want their kids to end up like remains. One legal way to do this is to make the cost of living sufficiently high that it guarantees your neighbors conform sufficiently to society's standards that they were able to accumulate wealth.
Here's a podcast episode on the particular issue if anyone wants to explore more
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that's not what's happening here. What jccalhoun is describing is actually a reduction in the cost of living. The younger people from the city are moving from the city because the town is cheaper. They didn't move before the aparments were built because the detached homes in the suburb were too expensive.
What's happening is two things 1) that people in detached homes in the middle of town the who aren't willing to live in apartments are seeing costs go up (because their land is more valuable) and 2) more people from the town are working it the city.
Of these two thing, I'd say that #2 is generally bad, but also orthogonal to building apartments. It just happens to be that they often happen together.
Yeah, the key is to just build enough. Almost everywhere in the US that's booming just doesn't build all that much -- you may see a lot of cranes around, but the % increase year over year in housing is usually pretty modest.
As for why booming areas don't build enough: exclusionary zoning, burdensome processes, NIMBYism in local meetings, and learned government helplessness.
Pricing people out is the obvious way when there is too little housing on offer. No point in keeping or building smaller / lower cost when there is so much more demand than supply.
