Not sure I buy the premise. Austin has a household $133k median income with a $435k median home price. It’s very affordable.

But, to make Austin more affordable still, you make it less expensive to build so that it’s profitable to build. Typical regulations that do this are: - Lower minimum sizing requirements - open zoning - raise height limits - make sure you don’t have unwarranted restricted fire codes (some places have elevator stairwell requirements that are insane) - make permitting easier or not required at all for some cases - no min parking requirements

Pretty sure as good as Austin is, they could easily reduce the costs by up to 30% (there are parts of the country with 50% the cost per sq ft for new construction).