I wonder about this. There's all this noise about a great housing shortage in San Francisco, but the population of SF is up only 65,000 people in 10 years. There are a lot more tall buildings. This may be a monopoly overpricing situation rather than an actual shortage. There's a huge amount of empty office space.

Remember, the world passed "peak baby" back in 2013. Population is leveling off in the developed world.

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AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Population growth is reduced by a housing shortage because people who otherwise want to move in can't if there aren't units available for them to move in to.

Moreover, who is supposed to have a monopoly on housing in San Francisco? Is there any single entity that owns even as much as 1% of all the housing in the city? And even if there was, wouldn't building more housing still fix it, because the more you build the more you dilute their monopoly?

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9rx 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> This may be a monopoly overpricing situation rather than an actual shortage.

An actual shortage is characterized by prices being prevented from rising. It is already understood that "shortage" is being used colloquially here.

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miki123211 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You have to look at the average household size and number of children, not just population.

A world where most households are man + woman + 0..3 children is very different than one where most households are 1..2 people + cat/dog. The latter demands far more housing than the former, even when populations are otherwise equal.

A population of 10 million singles demand 4 times more "housing units" than a population of 10 million people in 4-person families.

This is what makes immigration-driven population growth so pernicious compared to childbirth-driven. The family structures you end up with are completely different.

	▲	amluto an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> A population of 10 million singles demand 4 times more "housing units" than a population of 10 million people in 4-person families. Those housing units are not interchangeable. Families often want extra bedrooms, and units with extra bedrooms are frequently sorely lacking. This is one thing that is very strikingly different in different markets. A lot of US metros have a fair amount of new housing but almost none with even two bedrooms per unit, let alone three. In a place like Taiwan, there are similarly absurd housing prices, but the new dense developments have four- and five-bedroom units.
	▲	PlunderBunny 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don’t have any data or links to contribute, but my gut feeling is that this effect would be dwarfed by population movement, specifically urbanisation - if rural areas are emptying out as everyone moves to the city, you can get the same patterns (e.g. reduced housing supply in cities and all the flow on effects from that) without any change in total population.

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xg15 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I noticed there is a split how this topic is discussed in (center-)left and (center-)right circles.

The right generally takes as a given that the cause of the problem (if there is a problem at all) is that there is not enough housing and we just have to build more.

The left argues that in we in fact do have enough units that could be used for housing (or at least the situation is not as clear-cut), but that other factors prevent them to be available at affordable prices, like the effects of extreme income and wealth inequality on the market.

Personally, I think the "left-wing" explanation makes more sense - at least I've never understood where that sudden shortage of physical housing is supposed to have come from. We neither had a population explosion, nor a war or catastrophe that would have destroyed a lot of houses. So then why would there have been "enough" housing in the past but not anymore today?

	▲	dragonwriter 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Personally, I think the "left-wing" explanation makes more sense - at least I've never understood where that sudden shortage of physical housing is supposed to have come from. It comes from construction dropping far below what was necessary to keep up with historical utilization in proportion to population after the Great Recession and, while it has recovered above the amount needed to keep up, it hasn't been far enough ahead for long enough to cover the accumulated post-GR deficit. While this is a couple years old, it illustrates the issue: https://www.axios.com/2023/12/16/housing-market-why-homes-ex... (And the national story undersrates the problem going on in lots of in-demand cities, which weren't keeping up with local need before the broader collapse of the GR.)

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hdgvhicv 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Google suggests a whopping 15% if SF homes are empty.

London by comparison is about 2.5%

Why is SFs figure so high. Why are people holding on to unproductive assets, paying to maintain them.

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nikanj 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Empty means no permanent tenant means airbnb

	▲	hdgvhicv 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s included in londons 2.5% Dies SF have limits on rents that can be charged?

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nrhrjrjrjtntbt 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe land banking?

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nikanj 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There might not be a housing shortage on the North American continent, but that doesn't help because people want to live in New York, not upper Saskatchewan

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9rx an hour ago | parent [-]

You may personally prefer New York, but the data shows much greater population growth in Saskatchewan.

	▲	YmiYugy 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		But presumably pricing plays a role. If the cost of housing between NYC and Saskatchewan was comparable I imagine the former would have the higher growth rate.

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tonyhart7 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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