eli5: Would making house’s cheaper fix the housing issue?
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I’m not sure what other “housing issue” you’re talking about, since the issue I hear the most about is that housing is simply too expensive? Making housing cheaper *would* help to alleviate homeless-ness, but honestly a lot of homeless-ness is driven by more complex issues.
Anyway; yes absolutely it will fix the problem, but the question is “how?” Although again, the obvious answer is “change laws that mandate single family housing”. This allows housing to be built in greater densities, which is far more productive and useful than our current legally mandated, sparse suburban zoning.
It really won’t even result in a *noticable* increase in density, in almost any city where this is a problem. (Assuming a city doesn’t go the other direction and mandate apartment buildings everywhere). It’s not like we need 10x the current number of houses to bring home prices down; we could really do a lot with just 5-10% more housing units. In a neighborhood with 100 houses to begin with, that means building just one 10 unit apartment complex, or more likely, renovating ~10 of the larger single family homes into duplexes.
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