That is not really what I am proposing. In other parts of this thread, what I am proposing is to build in cheaper to build areas. You can build an SFR just about anywhere outside of NYC cheaper per sqft than an apartment in NYC.
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They're not building a lot. They're building almost nothing. NYC has ~3.3 million households and only ~33 thousand units were built last year. That's 1%, about half the us average, and tiny compared to places like Austin that are meeting demand for growth at 4-5% per year.
Jersey City is legitimately building at scale (10% growth!), but they're a super tiny part of the NYC metro, only accounting for 1.4% of the total population, so they're only growing the metro housing stock by 0.14%...
To your original point, I get how this can feel like 'true communism has never been tried', but it's also disingenuous to say that building "more" doesn't work when "more" is still less than what the market will bear at current pricing or even (as in NYC), less than the organic increase in demand.
There's lots of room for good faith arguments about what policies would be effective in achieving growth at those levels. Maybe you're right and private development at the necessary levels can't be induced. Subsidies or public development is then worth considering.
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https://nypost.com/2024/08/20/real-estate/nyc-has-more-home-construction-than-any-other-us-city/