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poulsbohemian | on: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
The problem is that in places like Seattle and the Bay Area, there are hard geographic limits to construction, even if you turn them into endless high-rises. Having watched the WA state legislature go through several years of attempts to fix housing by throwing random policy ideas into the void, I'm not convinced any of it matters nearly as much as a) more money in the state housing trust to help people with down payments and b) a robust economy so more people have more money that they can apply toward housing.

So, sure, yes, by all means do things like pass residential-in-repurposed commercial changes, ADUs, greater density in transit-oriented neighborhoods - do all the things. But, getting more people able to move to parts of the state (in my case, Yakima, the Tri-Cities, Spokane, etc) where there are houses just sitting around relative to King / Pierce / Snohomish... that's just as viable a solution and solves a whole bunch of other water / energy / land use / political / social type problems.

derektank | parent | next
>The problem is that in places like Seattle and the Bay Area, there are hard geographic limits to construction, even if you turn them into endless high-rises

Over three quarters of all residential land in Seattle is zoned single family and the population density of the city is less than a third that of NYC. The geography is not the hard constraint in this city.

nradov | parent | next
Subsidizing down payments doesn't do anything to improve housing availability or affordability in the long run. It just artificially inflates real estate values and acts as a wealth transfer from taxpayers to property owners.
hombre_fatal | parent
You offer cities with aggressive anti-development regulations, like max height restrictions, and then suggest things would be the same if they instead had endless high-rises?

Sounds like you've found an infinite-value hack: let developers build infinite housing yet prices stay the same.

How many of those "random policy ideas into the void" were to lift regulations to allow people to build housing? Which sounds a hell of a lot simpler than figuring out how to make everyone wealthier without proportional increases in market prices.