I think one of the problems is we keep searching for a "miracle cure" rather than getting our hands dirty and putting in the work to fix these problems. Rather than thinking of each as a distinct issue, we should think about these as a complicated web of problems: fixing one may make another worse temporarily, but if we work on several at once, we can make a meaningful difference for a lot of people.
Let's take home values, for example. Homeowners are typically against changes that can decrease their property value because of how important home ownership is for generational wealth here. We've made the assumption that house prices will increase YoY forever, which just isn't feasible - especially considering homes will age and encounter more and more issues as they age.
Naturally, you have NIMBYs who don't want their home values to decrease – honestly, I can't blame them. I think making housing affordable for everyone (or at least _most_ of everyone) will require a significant shift about how we think about home ownership.
There's also the hidden cost of suburban developments to cities[0] which results in chronic underfunding of city services, not to mention the added cost of car ownership typically required to live in a single-family home. I drive rather little, but typically spend ~$150/mo on insurance and gas alone in a given month.
It's a hard problem that will require many people smarter than me to figure out how to get us out of this web. But I think that it can happen if we acknowledge that our cities have problems and actually invest time and money into fixing it.
Let's take home values, for example. Homeowners are typically against changes that can decrease their property value because of how important home ownership is for generational wealth here. We've made the assumption that house prices will increase YoY forever, which just isn't feasible - especially considering homes will age and encounter more and more issues as they age.
Naturally, you have NIMBYs who don't want their home values to decrease – honestly, I can't blame them. I think making housing affordable for everyone (or at least _most_ of everyone) will require a significant shift about how we think about home ownership.
There's also the hidden cost of suburban developments to cities[0] which results in chronic underfunding of city services, not to mention the added cost of car ownership typically required to live in a single-family home. I drive rather little, but typically spend ~$150/mo on insurance and gas alone in a given month.
It's a hard problem that will require many people smarter than me to figure out how to get us out of this web. But I think that it can happen if we acknowledge that our cities have problems and actually invest time and money into fixing it.
[0]: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/5/7/the-more-we-bui...