There's a time asymmetry at play. I think it's inevitable specifically in those cities where costs are rising quickly and feelings of housing insecurity are acute--the same cities we normally discuss in the context of rent control. In that case you couldn't possibly build quickly enough to address the issue. And let's not ignore one of the primary reasons communities often find themselves in that situation--zoning and regulatory hurdles that limit supply, demanded by the very same electorate suffering from lack of supply, yet which isn't nearly as keen, if at all, at removing those hurdles.
Rent control is even on the table in cities like Chicago, which relatively speaking has been pro development. But for a state law prohibiting it, Chicago would now have rent control; and it seems likely that exceptions to that prohibition will pass the legislature. That goes to show that time asymmetry is problematic even without the scourge of single-family home NIMBYs.
Regarding the free trade analogy, the alternative I had in mind wasn't building factories, but moving to new locales and finding new jobs. Which is the de facto existing alternative for housing supply-constrained cities, which have been free all along to promote greater densification, but simply incapable of doing so to the extent necessary.
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There's a time asymmetry at play. I think it's inevitable specifically in those cities where costs are rising quickly and feelings of housing insecurity are acute--the same cities we normally discuss in the context of rent control. In that case you couldn't possibly build quickly enough to address the issue. And let's not ignore one of the primary reasons communities often find themselves in that situation--zoning and regulatory hurdles that limit supply, demanded by the very same electorate suffering from lack of supply, yet which isn't nearly as keen, if at all, at removing those hurdles.
Rent control is even on the table in cities like Chicago, which relatively speaking has been pro development. But for a state law prohibiting it, Chicago would now have rent control; and it seems likely that exceptions to that prohibition will pass the legislature. That goes to show that time asymmetry is problematic even without the scourge of single-family home NIMBYs.
Regarding the free trade analogy, the alternative I had in mind wasn't building factories, but moving to new locales and finding new jobs. Which is the de facto existing alternative for housing supply-constrained cities, which have been free all along to promote greater densification, but simply incapable of doing so to the extent necessary.