Citation on this? Seattle has added tens of thousands of units and upzoned many neighborhoods. At one point I could look out my window and see 21 cranes building high rises, both mixed use and office buildings. The population influx has been massive.
These are typically luxury units, which are not affordable to most people outside the tech sector. Meanwhile, despite high salaries many people in the tech sector (rightly) don't want to pay luxury prices, and so they are also competing for lower priced housing.
Oh, 100%. We need to incentivize affordable housing. It should be in the developers interest to house as many as possible rather than as lushly as possible (until we're all comfortably housed.)
How? Why would a developer want to lose money housing as many people as possible? At the end of the day your looking to sell or rent for the highest $ per SQ FT possible in your market, with the least amount of risk. If your rent to 50 @ $500, your gross monthly rent income is 25,000. If you rent to 10 @ 2,500 you have the same totals. You are much less profitable with 50 units @ $500 because of maintenance/repairs, tenant issues & labor. It takes a whole lot more to keep 50 units operating than 10.
