> Who is going to build all these new houses? Unemployment is super low and tradesmen are completely booked.
Unemployment is a measure of labor market efficiency. We have computers now so anybody who needs work can apply to jobs over the internet or install an app and do gig work. The only times in this century that the unemployment rate has exceeded 6% were immediately after the housing crisis and a few months during COVID.
But labor market efficiency tells you nothing about how hard it is to find someone to hire. You don't have to find someone without a job, all you have to do is pay more than driving for Uber does.
> Many skilled tradesmen require licensing that takes years to acquire and can not be brought online quickly. Others are unionized that restrict membership.
These are the regulatory barriers, and there are obvious ways to bring capacity online faster. Example: Give a license to anyone who can pass a written exam, then eliminate the testing/licensing fees and give away free study materials.
Here's a big one for free: Stop charging for renewals, so older tradesmen can "retire" (i.e. stop working full time) without making it prohibitively burdensome or expensive to retain their license and work part-time.
> And then there’s materials. Did you see what happened to costs with an uptick in the demand/supply balance during Covid? It’s not so easy to just suddenly increase supply to suit demand on many materials as the inputs come from natural sources that are limited.
Short-term demand shocks are exactly that. It takes time to increase production capacity, but that takes a year give or take depending on the industry, and then output continues at the higher level indefinitely.
There are no practical natural limits on raw materials. You reopen some marginal iron mines. The park service buys some agricultural land to convert into forest while selling some forest land to be logged and converted to agriculture, creating immediate lumber availability. Wood, plastic and aluminum can be substituted for each other in various use cases depending on availability.
> Lastly the people that own the land wound rather build valuable things on it than housing for poors.
Housing is the valuable thing they're prohibited from building on it. The existing problem is that there is too much land zoned only for single-family homes. A piece of land with one single-family home isn't as valuable as the same piece of land with a 10 story building providing 80 housing units.
> For most of history a lot of people had rather modest living conditions. Very small spaces with limited services.
This is literally the thing that people are prohibited from building. Prices would go down significantly if it wasn't because there are plenty of people who would pay a lower price for a smaller space, except that building 10 times as many units on the same lot is prohibited by zoning, and if you can only build one unit on a lot then it's going to be a full-sized house and not a studio.
It's not a dictator that you need, it's to get the government to stop prohibiting things that ought not to be prohibited. Which you can go vote for.
One of the better ways to do this is to go vote at the state or federal level to remove local zoning restrictions. Because the locals want their housing prices to go up and you don't get a vote in the local election unless you can already afford a house there, but you do get to vote in state and federal elections, so use it.
But the idea is that people make better decisions the closer they are to the effects of said decisions. You're promoting a dangerous idea that allows people who don't live near you to erect 10-story apartment buildings next to your house and extract the economic lifeblood of your neighborhood back to wherever they live (probably a place with zoning).
If someone owns the property next to you, they obviously have an economic interest in the neighborhood. They may or may not live there, but that has nothing to do with zoning. Someone can own a single-family home and rent it out. Meanwhile you can have a 10-story condominium where every single unit is owner-occupied. How tall the building is has nothing to do with whether the property owner lives in it.
Unemployment is a measure of labor market efficiency. We have computers now so anybody who needs work can apply to jobs over the internet or install an app and do gig work. The only times in this century that the unemployment rate has exceeded 6% were immediately after the housing crisis and a few months during COVID.
But labor market efficiency tells you nothing about how hard it is to find someone to hire. You don't have to find someone without a job, all you have to do is pay more than driving for Uber does.
> Many skilled tradesmen require licensing that takes years to acquire and can not be brought online quickly. Others are unionized that restrict membership.
These are the regulatory barriers, and there are obvious ways to bring capacity online faster. Example: Give a license to anyone who can pass a written exam, then eliminate the testing/licensing fees and give away free study materials.
Here's a big one for free: Stop charging for renewals, so older tradesmen can "retire" (i.e. stop working full time) without making it prohibitively burdensome or expensive to retain their license and work part-time.
> And then there’s materials. Did you see what happened to costs with an uptick in the demand/supply balance during Covid? It’s not so easy to just suddenly increase supply to suit demand on many materials as the inputs come from natural sources that are limited.
Short-term demand shocks are exactly that. It takes time to increase production capacity, but that takes a year give or take depending on the industry, and then output continues at the higher level indefinitely.
There are no practical natural limits on raw materials. You reopen some marginal iron mines. The park service buys some agricultural land to convert into forest while selling some forest land to be logged and converted to agriculture, creating immediate lumber availability. Wood, plastic and aluminum can be substituted for each other in various use cases depending on availability.
> Lastly the people that own the land wound rather build valuable things on it than housing for poors.
Housing is the valuable thing they're prohibited from building on it. The existing problem is that there is too much land zoned only for single-family homes. A piece of land with one single-family home isn't as valuable as the same piece of land with a 10 story building providing 80 housing units.
> For most of history a lot of people had rather modest living conditions. Very small spaces with limited services.
This is literally the thing that people are prohibited from building. Prices would go down significantly if it wasn't because there are plenty of people who would pay a lower price for a smaller space, except that building 10 times as many units on the same lot is prohibited by zoning, and if you can only build one unit on a lot then it's going to be a full-sized house and not a studio.