John Myers, Ben Southwood, and Sam Bowman argue that the housing shortage is at the root of nearly every major policy problem - from declining birth rates to low productivity to inequality.
“The single most important policy article of the last decade. Once you see housing as the bottleneck for everything else - wages, fertility, mobility, inequality - you can't unsee it. This is Works in Progress's masterpiece.”
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This article radicalized me on housing policy. Every problem I cared about - wages, inequality, birth rates, commute times - traced back to the same root cause. Fix housing and you fix half of everything else.
The fertility section is the most underappreciated part. Young couples can't afford a third bedroom, so they have fewer kids. We're literally pricing ourselves out of the next generation.
Tokyo builds more housing than the entire state of California. Same democracy, same property rights - different zoning rules. The solution is known. The politics are the obstacle.