The homeowners aren’t selfish, they are motivated. Why would they act against something that would clearly devalue them?

If the roles were reversed I doubt these observers would be calling for a change in narrative.

> The homeowners aren’t selfish, they are motivated. Why would they act against something that would clearly devalue them?

That isn't actually what happens -- and the misunderstanding is what causes so much of the conflict.

If you rezone for high density, the price per square foot goes down, but the price per acre goes way up -- because suddenly developers will pay you a mint for your land so they can knock down your house and build a high rise there.

The people who theoretically lose out are the people who own property way out in the suburbs, because most people won't want to live there and spend two hours in traffic every day once they can afford to live in the city. But even they don't really lose out because now they can afford to live in the city and the value of not having to sit in traffic every day is worth more than what they're losing on their house.

The whole thing is just a huge misunderstanding. A cynic might suggest the narrative was devised by the banks to drive up mortgage loan principal amounts. Or the car companies to keep people from living in places with viable mass transit.

It's a death spiral waiting to happen. Companies will move away from areas where their employees can't get hosting. Not many have to move before the rest start to follow, and the speculative part of the home valuations disappear.

Either they let the pressure out gradually or the thing is going to pop.

> It's a death spiral waiting to happen.

Probably not.

> Companies will move away from areas where their employees can't get hosting.

And if that happens in even a small degree, housing prices will drop, relieving the problem. It's only a problem if their is a sharply threshold where below which no one moves out, but just above which lots of companies do. That's not entirely implausible, but it's not all that probable.

> Not many have to move before the rest start to follow

That right there is the highly speculative part; if it's true, you have an out of control positive feedback loop, but otherwise it's a self-controlling negative feedback loop.

They have been saying that for years, and instead the opposite has happened. Most IT work could be done remotely, yet the vast majority of companies want staff on site. Almost every job I have had has involved distributed teams yet I am still expected to be in an office most of the time.

Has that ever panned out in practice? I mean, has a city economy in the US or somewhere else in the world ever popped because of too high housing prices?

It might be about to!

The USA has never had housing priced at such a high number of hours of work before.

We’ve always gotten this high and then housing would crash, the jobs would leave causing housing to fall, not the other way around.

I actually agree with you here, I'm just pointing out that there is no indecision of any sort on the part of homeowners.

> Clearly everybody who already owns a home is heavily leaning into the 'make housing as expensive as possible' conclusion.

Not me, and not lots of other homeowners, judging by the polls. NIMBYism is common, but most Californians do want more housing constructed.