Definitely, I am a big believer in Housing First and affordable housing by allowing high density development, as it is a viable path forward for cities and it defends suburbs from pressure to redevelop much more destructive low density redevelopment.
It's a long chain of logic, but fractional reserve banking, at the levels we're seeing, prevents it.
Most of our money supply is created through debt. As a result, housing is bought through debt rather than owned. The competition for better homes drives prices astronomical. The only way to actually get affordable housing is to either move people where there is no competition (e.g. desert of Arizona), or to reduce reserve limits.
Fractional reserve banking generates trillions for big banks, and the electorate doesn't get it. It's not going away.
I implore you to take some time and read at least one or two credible papers on the subject, because your understanding of fractional reserve banking is frankly too misinformed to unpack in the space of a forum comment. Suffice it to say I've certainly never seen any indication that removing easy availability of credit results in positive outcomes for the classes who already lack in capital. I'll include some links for you to get started at the bottom.
What can be addressed is the concept of affordable housing. Housing, to a certain degree follows a pretty tight supply and demand curve; put simply if you want affordable housing, pressure your local government to green light permits to build affordable housing[2].
I'm getting off-topic here but can you share some resources on how low density developments are much more destructive? I'm usually very pro low density housing (and also very anti high density housing) so I'd like to have some new perspectives on this. Thanks.
Consider this: My local road takes up ~40,000 square metres of space all in (road, front yards, houses, back yards). That houses 660 families. Near the local train station they'll be housing that same amount in <2,000 square metres of high density housing.
So to handle twice the population, we could either free up ~2,000 square metres, or re-develop the entire road two have twice the density, leading to the loss of most of the single dwelling houses and private gardens.
It's not so much that low density is bad, as that not having high density takes choice away once there's no more space and you have to start increasing density anyway, often in all kinds of suboptimal ways.
Why can't we consider expanding to new non-developed areas in this scenario?
The main reason I'm anti high density areas is it's unhealthy: people are stressed, there's no sense of community, commerce space is scarce and extremely expensive to rent so { banks, supermarkets, estate agents } take all of them making any new commercial idea almost impossible to put through thus less employment too. I don't know much about this though, it's just my thoughts after living in very different areas and cities and how I feel about it.
> Why can't we consider expanding to new non-developed areas in this scenario?
Because a lot of people want to keep relatively untouched nature too.
> people are stressed
I don't see any evidence that this is caused by high density living.
> there's no sense of community
Most suburban areas, in my experience, have little sense of community. Maybe small villages are different, but in the suburban areas I've lived, at most I knew my immediate neighbours. People often tend to drive too and from the places where they are involved in community activities. If anything, I feel more connected to communities that form separate from the residential areas, and there tend to be more of them in high density city centres.
> commerce space is scarce
Is it? Near me, the densest areas have plenty of available commercial units cheaply available.
More importantly: Building densely allow for far more flexibility with the rest of the space.
>commerce space is scarce and extremely expensive to rent so { banks, supermarkets, estate agents } take all of them making any new commercial idea almost impossible to put through thus less employment too
I guess I'll go tell all the shops and such in Davis Square that they don't exist.
