We're already short on housing even with this to the degree that real wages have stagnated or shrank since the 1970s. The only way to do that would be to almost completely stop immigration and population growth.
The US has plenty of housing. It's just not where the jobs are. With the automation of agriculture and moving manufacturing to other countries, the employment map of the US changed rapidly in the past few decades, and our physical infrastructure hasn't caught up yet.
> The only way to do that would be to almost completely stop immigration and population growth.
Assuming current trends continue (and I see no reason they wouldn't), the US will probably be net negative relatively soon. I know so many young people who have no plans to have children because they can't afford it and don't want to bring them into a world they think will be in a worse state than the one they grew up in.
Tangentially, I am amazed at the data in your source about how fast population growth is leveling off in the US. In 2020, the census projected US population to continue growing and cross 400 million by 2058 [1]. This projection accounts for the observed trends in falling fertility rate and assumes relatively constant rate of immigration:
>By 2030, immigration is projected to become the primary driver of population
>growth: more people are projected to be added to the population through net
>international migration than from natural increase. The projected shift to net
>international immigration as the primary driver of population growth is the
>result of falling fertility rates and the rising number of deaths in an aging
>population, not because of a projected increase in international migration.
I guess the pandemic broke a lot of those assumptions. We will see if they hold in the long run though.
I’d really like to see more Parisian style density.
I really find it hard to believe we could triple the density of major cities and magically there’d never be empty housing. At some point demand will drop off.
