The affordability crisis many cities are facing are not caused by the fact that rent increases exist, it's that they're increasing faster than wage increases.
One does not need to hold off rent increases for an arbitrary amount of time, they just have to stay inline with wages to remain affordable. With that in mind, it is certainly not impossible to build enough to keep up with job/wage growth.
I agree that no single policy can fix everything, but the current status quo of pitting the haves (rent control) vs. have-nots (newcomers/movers) is not working.
Nobody was talking about nationwide averages, because the housing crunch is local, not an average of what's going on throughout the country.
Wages in [U.S.] metropolitan areas have increased much more than what was referenced in your source [1], while housing in many of those areas has not kept up with that growth.
Just look at the wage growth at top metros, many of which have grown a lot recently, but have failed to increase housing supply to correspond with that growth.
Affordability crisis in these metros are the result of restrictive zoning policies that greatly restrict supply. The ones holding the bag are those that need to move, or had the unfortunate timing of being born more recently and are stuck paying recent market rates.
Rent control adds even more fuel to the fire by artificially constraining supply even further through reduced liquidity. People will stay longer than they otherwise would in their rent controlled unit because moving to a new one means paying market-rate on a different unit.
No, throughout this entire thread I have been specific about:
- Cities/metros, not the entire US.
- I was also specific about cities/metros that are experiencing a housing crisis, and not making an argument that all metros are in a housing crisis.
- I then cited my sources, and once again was specific about wage growth in top metros and how many have failed to grow their housing supply along with wages. That 86% of the U.S. is urbanized and growing 1% faster than average is not the issue here, it's that where growth is happening, supply is not keeping up.
- I then argued that restrictive policies are constraining supply. In the case of this article pertaining to Berlin, it's rent control. Metros in the U.S. with supply constrains (Like the SF Bay) also use rent control and limit supply.
Despite being specific, you keep conflating my arguments, or steering away from my core argument: Constrained housing supply is not keeping up with demand. I'm also arguing that it isn't impossible to build enough supply to keep up with demand.
One does not need to hold off rent increases for an arbitrary amount of time, they just have to stay inline with wages to remain affordable. With that in mind, it is certainly not impossible to build enough to keep up with job/wage growth.
I agree that no single policy can fix everything, but the current status quo of pitting the haves (rent control) vs. have-nots (newcomers/movers) is not working.