The housing trap
Do we all actually want housing affordability?
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Are renters & homeowners on the same team?
The Wall Street Journal (pay wall) has a front page story today on the decline of the Austin real estate market. The headline:
YIMBYs on social media are clowning on the gloomy framing.
For anyone who has been engaged in Austin politics, it's hard to imagine that a decline in the cost of housing would be a cause for despair. At least on the surface, the housing debate in this town has always been about how to bring prices down, not about whether they should go down.
But if you scratch below the surface you'll realize that not everyone was actually rooting for prices to decline.